S The sibilant which is chiefly notable for its absence from phrases that
characters in stories are alleged to "hiss".
SAGE OF SOUTH GATE Rick Sneary, from his BNFship and residence.
SAPS The Spectator Amateur Press Society, second oldest of the principally
fannish APAs. Half the size of FAPA (30-35 members) it is little if any
less active owing to its higher activity requirements (6 pages on entry, and
6 every 6 months thereafter).
Originally, SAPS was brainstormed at a tendril-session at Joe Kennedy's,
where many members of the Spectators ("a kind of New Jersey version of the
Futurian Society, only without Social Consciousness") were present. Ron
Maddox, who was to be the first OE, coined the name Spectator Amateur Press
Association, but then Lee Budoff had the inspiration to change the last name
to Society so the initials would spell you-know-what.
SAPS has no fixed body of rules, the OE being omnicompetent except insofar
as custom and the threat of revolution limits him; he is the only functioning
officer, taking care of treasury, membership roster, constitutional
interpretation, and mailing management. An Emergency Officer is designated to
take over in the event of hiser death or disenchantment; the first place in
the annual Pillar Poll award carries the titular presidency with it. All
other members are titular vice-presidents, signifying their chance of
succeeding to the higher post. (Tho this last office was actually adopted as
a gesture of whimsy.) Ballot-counters and Pillar Poll takers are appointed as
appropriate and necessary. The Busbys during their OE-ship had all sorts of
weird offices like EEO and EIEIO and Chief of Secret Police which we note and
pass by.
Historically SAPS exhibits a predilection for fan humor of the lighter
and broader sort, and during its early years maintained a tradition of sniping
at FAPA ("SAPS is the fan club FAPA would be if FAPA dared") which,
significantly, is more or less abandoned during periods when SAPSzines'
quality begins to approach the FAPA standard in earnest.
SATIRE There be two types. One, the Aldous Huxley sort, consists of
exaggeration of present excesses to absurd degrees. The Jonathan
Swift type, much more artful, has our ordinary absurd customs acted out by
creatures rather different from us so that their silliness becomes apparent;
if it is foolish for the six-inch King of Lilliput to put on grand airs, is it
any less silly for us simply because we're scaled in feet instead of inches?
Most fan satire has been of the Huxley, burlesque, variety, consisting of
fictitious fan gatherings or conversations with outstanding personalities,
notably by Hoy Ping Pong of old and various Anglofans today. The Insurgents
have presented some deadly work in the Swift manner, as in the Ashley Mythos.
Satire of fans as a species is often in the character of Joe Fann.
SAY SOMETHING IN CANADIAN Ben Singer fostered international harmony by making
this request of Detroit-visiting Canadian fen.
SCIENCE AND FANTASY Motto of the N3F, from the interests ascribed to members.
SCIENCE-FICTION The branch of fantasy which deals with "the results of the
occurrence of some scientific phenomenon or invention which
has never been known to occur, but is possible in the sense that it cannot be
proved impossible". (That's the IPO definition.) Simpler is Lowndes': "an
extrapolation on some scientific fact".
We exclude from "science-fiction" stories like "The Geometrics of Johnny
Day" and many of the "Hick's Inventions With a Kick" series which are
demonstrably possible right now; their misclassification as stf rests upon a
misunderstanding of the term "science-fiction" as if it meant any fiction
which involve science, like Arrowsmith. It is also required that the
story be scientifically plausible; that it not disregard accepted contemporary
scientific knowledge, tho mere inaccuracies come under the heading of literary
license -- a stfyarn does not become weird or fantasy because of them.
(Similarly, statistical investigation -- like looking to see what's actually
on the site where Heinlein's hero built his "Crooked House" in LA -- does not
change the classification.) And when further advance of science may show a
story impossible, as with Charles Brockden Brown's Wieland (1789),
based on ventriloquism, the tale should remain in the classification "science
fiction".
The three fathers of science-fiction are Edgar Allan Poe, Jules Verne,
and HG Wells. The latter explored almost all of the fields now exploited in
science-fiction magazines, and raised SF to the level of a literary type. As
authors have explored more fields of fantasy, and commentators have continued
to divide the field into only three parts (stf, weird, and "pure" fantasy),
"science-fiction" has come to mean other fiction besides that based on
extrapolation of scientific fact into our future: virtually all tales
of the future, the prehistoric past, or of alternate presents or pasts, even
tho no connection with our present via time-machine is indicated (as HG Wells'
The Brothers). Marconette has suggested the class "political fantasy".
Other names for science-fiction are scientifiction (elsewhere defined);
pseudo-science stories (fiercely fought by our fraternity); scientific fiction
(which some prefer because of a mistaken belief that the modifier [scientific]
should be in adjectival form); and scientific romances (last word meaning
imaginative novels such as grew up during the Romantic revolt, not necessarily
connected with affection).
SCIENCE-FICTION TESTS Alvin Earl Perry suggested to the SFL the idea of
granting "degrees" to graduates of a "University of
Fantastic Fiction" and Thomas S Gardner promptly developed the idea into the
Science Fiction tests, which enabled participants to win egoboo and display
their knowledge of the field. The things came in seven sections; the first
four comprised 100 questions on SF, the fifth two 250-word essays (on such
subjects as your friends' reaction to stf, the plot of your favorite story,
time-travel, ktp), the sixth your opinions on such matters as your favorite
author, the future of SF, space travel, and the destiny of man. The seventh
part was a quiz on elementary science. A minimum grade of 70% qualified one
as a B Stf (Bachelor of Scientifiction). Baccalaurei, if they had helped put
out a fanzine or had a story published in the proz, were entitled to sit for
their Master's degree by writing a thesis of 5000 words on [ghod help us!] the
subject of stf's educational value and its aid in the improvement of
civilization. Five stories in the prozines would have qualified an M Stf for
his Doctorate.
All seven sections of the test were published together (January '35,
matriculating 42 fen including Lowndes, Wollheim, and Ackerman -- the latter
one of the top 3 graduates, with 97% -- and July '35, producing 35 more
Bachelors) but Gernsback lost control of the magazine soon and under the TWS
aegis of Standard Magazines the SFL got much less space and executive zeal.
SCIENCE-FANTASY A classification sometimes used for science-fiction proper.
But in this volume it designates science-fiction in which
fantasy elements are vital -- e g Lest Darkness Fall, in which hero
Padway is struck by lightning and thus transferred to decadent Rome, where all
his other actions are science-fictional; or those in which the author (like
Ego Clarke in The City and The Stars) depicts the accomplishments of a
science so advanced that it merges with wish-fulfillment fantasy.
SCIENTI- A prefix which should indicate only "scientific" (as in "scientific-
tion") but in use may mean "science-fictional" (as "scientifilm") or
even designate something pertaining to fandom.
SCIENTIFICOMBINATION (Ackerman) The archetypal scientificombination was
Gernsback's "scientifiction", but under the influence of
Ackerman many other combinations came into fannish use: pename, stfunnyarn,
actifan; and in colloquial writing nonce-combinations may be made whenever the
writer notices the proper recurrence of letter(s) on both sides of a space and
it won't be confusing: the majority ofans, don't blame,
wothell, etc. It was formerly the practice to underline letters
serving double duty, but this is now done only if it's necessary to make the
meaning clear.
SCIENTIFICOMICS Panel strips or pages, the ill-called "funny papers", which
use fantastic material. In addition to comics regularly
fantastic there have been many dabblers, and scientificomics have appeared
thru the mediums of reprint comic magazines, original comic magazines, Big
Little Books, magazines like Out Of This World Adventures, fanzines, toys,
children's clubs, etc. Fen on the whole dislike the comics for the same
reason they dislike floods of new and inferior proz, and the dutiful collector
now is rare.
The 100% fantastics include such as Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, Brick
Bradford, Superman, Mandrake, Alley Oop and other long-established strips;
plus short-lived ones like Rick Kane Space Marshal, Beyond Mars (with
continuity by Jack Williamson, who should be ashamed of himself), Space Cadet
(a picturization of the TV series), and in England "Jeff Hawke, Space Rider".
Fandom has gotten into the comics too; in 1954 Strange Adventures, a comic
book, came out with a tale of light-signals between Earth and Saturn at the
"N2F" convention in San Francisco, Saturnians having contacted us as most
likely to believe in them. Shudder and pass on.
SCIENTIFICTION (Gernsback) A scientificombination of "scientific fiction"
coined before Amazing Stories appeared, back when the
Electrical Experimenter was publishing the stuff. It was not replaced by
"science-fiction" with or without hyphen till about 1930, and its abbreviation
"stf" still persists. One reason the word itself fell into disuse is the
difficulty of pronouncing it so as to show its elements; "scienti-fiction" is
more natural than "scien-TIF-FIC-tion". It should properly designate only
such science-fiction as is extrapolation on science, tho the abbreviation
"stf" equals "SF".
SCIENTOLOGY Dianetics, "The Modern Science of Mental Health", was developed
by L Ron Hubbard and published in Astounding just about the time
stfnists had managed to live down the Shaver Mystery. It postulated the
existence of mental blocks ("engrams") which could be removed by mentally re-
enacting ("running") them. Those who have had all their engrams removed
became "clears"; i.e. mentally perfect supermen; those who have had an engram
restimulated without being removed are insane. Some folk, including a number
of fans, approved its wholistic approach to psychiatric problems, but very
many more were alienated by the Sunday-supplement techniques of publicity
Hubbard used and his irresponsibility in other matters. When the book
Dianetics came out the blurbs in aSF persuaded many fans to buy copies,
but later publications were of such a nature as to bring alarm and despondency
in their wake. Aside from several books in which he developed Dianetics into
what is now Scientology Hubbard advertised (at $1500 a copy) Excalibur,
which he revealed to be the source of all knowledge. (He'd obtained it from
god in person when he died for eight minutes during an operation.) Dianetics
and Scientology are but chapters in this mighty work, which drove five of the
first dozen people who saw it insane. For those who aren't yet ready,
Scientology provides an introductory discipline; this takes the foundation-
notions of Dianetics and adds the concept of Theta Beings, who are omnipotent
entities outside the universe of matter, energy, space and time. Fact is,
they're so omnipotent that they haven't anything to do with themselves and
play the game of the material universe just for kicks; that is, they incarnate
inside material bodies and "deliberately forget" their real nature. I got a
thetan, you got a thetan, all Clod's chillun got thetans, and Scientologists
will gladly audit you to restore your memory ($500 for 36 hours).
(Parenthetically, human bodies without Thetans are robotlike, mindless,
uncultivated creatures, alla time acting skeptical and sneering like them
dirty scientist fellers.) Dr. JA Winter, an MD who tried Dianetics
eclectically and got some results, thoughtfully points out that several people
who seemed sane took a course of auditing and had to be institutionalized as
psychotics -- detectable ones, that is. And he adds that nobody's yet
produced a "clear", however much auditing was given. Evidently
74,000,000,000,000 years [that's how long the thetans have supposedly been
reincarnating in material bodies] of entanglement in the universe takes a good
deal of brainwashing to erase.
Such a deal of skimble-skamble stuff seems a lot to have come from one
person, however inclined to mysticism and such moonshine. A good deal, as
people familiar with this field will recognize, is simple imitation of
Theosophy, Vedanta, and other Occidentalized forms of Hinduism; most of the
rest is from the imagination of patients in auditing. (Auditing involves
throwing the subject into a light hypnotic trance; the imaginativeness and
suggestibility of people in such a condition is well known.) The astral
bodies, universe of unthinkable age, Mysterious Powers Beyond Man,
reincarnation, and (particularly) the superhuman state of the occult initiate
(provided he's got a big enough bankroll to afford it) are all commonplaces of
crackpot cult movements; our special discredit is that this one got its start
in the world of stf, and we let Hubbard and his crew get away with it.
SCI-FI (Ackerman) 4e is trying to popularize this expression as an
equivalent for stf, i e a contraction for science-fiction. So far it
has attached chiefly to several professional movie-fan magazines and other
Hollywood-level stuff.
SCRAPBOOKS The best are specially made to be scrapbooks, with extra
interleaving at the bound edge to offset the bulge that will come
as they fill. The contents include clippings from papers, magazines, et al;
small flat items like convention name tags which could not easily be filed
with magazines; file copies of stickers; and photographs, if there's no
special album for them. Some fans have very specialized scrapbooks, as, one
for movie programs, one for clippings on the Wellescare, usw.
SECOND SHEET Used in the days of poverty. It's not quite acceptable as bond
paper, and therefore cheaper by about a third; originally
intended for carbon copies and like that, some fans found it would take
reasonably well to mimeo and barely passably to ditto. But it's pretty
revolting even at best.
SECRETARY The hardest-working official, with the exception sometimes of the
official editor, and often combined with the treasurership. In
FAPA, a card file indexing members several different ways was set up by
Rothman and later, by Warner, and passed on to successors; other organizations
keep records in ledger books or loose-leaf notebooks. Art Rapp once made up
special ledger forms for the use of SAPS, and others for individual fans'
expense records. Managing Secretary was a title in several organizations,
notably New Fandom, where it was virtually the only office and roughly
equivalent in power over the organization to the General Secretaryship which
was Stalin's office in the CPSU(B). In FAPA the Secretary-Treasurer isn't the
official keeper of records, but only maintains the membership roster and
allots membership credits in his Secretary facet.
SEMANTICS The study of the meaning of words and sentences. Semantics was
popularized in fandom largely thru the stories of Heinlein, and now
every good fan will inquire into such questions as, 'How did his insulting you
really hurt you?", "What do you mean by snobbishness?", "How does a
coordinator coordinate, how does a local affiliate, and what difference does
it make after it's affilitated?", "If you don't mean 'government control' by
'public control', what do you mean -- control by industrial
organizations?", "How much does the pledge that the Metrocon won't conflict
with the Norwescon mean in the planning and execution of it?", usw. According
to the philosophy behind semantics, if a proposition makes no conceivable
difference in the way things may be expected to act, it is meaningless to ask
whether it's "true" or not. So many fans have been made wary of such
expressions as "free will", "significance", "essence", etc. Another angle of
attack is to watch the emotional connotations of words. "Treason" was a bad
word to brand a man with in Patrick Henry's day, but when the burgesses cried
"Treason!" at him he defied the customary connotations of the word in his
well-known reply. Because fans are expected to defy emotional connotations,
it is not unusual to see more advanced ones calmly making such statements as:
"Certainly I'm puritanical", "You've been stupid in this case", and "Fans are
egoists who need to be taken down a notch".
It is not possible to discuss the entire field of semantics here, but the
above indicates the chief way in which the study has been employed in fandom.
It is a useful tool, tho it can be misused or abused.
SEMI-CANCELLED Material struck out with virgules so that, tho ostensibly a
typo, it remains legible (as it was intended to be). This
h/e/r/e/ is a specimen,/ /y/o/u/-/a/l/l/.
[LATER: This proved so difficult to imitate on a word processor that I've used
the legal strikeout font -- this sort of thing -- in most
places.]
SECOND LARGEST COLLECTION "Hal Shapiro and I", Martin Alger explains, "were
having a feud (largely artificial) in SAPS and were
trading insults in our fanzines. Hal boasted of having the second largest
pornography collection in the city of Detroit." This was true at the time as
most of the stfnists were not yet interested in women. Actually, appraises
connoisseur Howard DeVore, it was a very poor collection of the type. "A deck
of cards and a few nude studies, as I recall."
SENSE OF WONDER (Moskowitz) That which characterizes stfnists (def. 2) in
general; and, the quality in science-fiction that arouses
their admiration. Much jeering at SaM's expense has accompanied his
proclamations of need for/discovery of this commodity, and many doubt that the
phrase really describes anything more definite than the glow of enjoyment.
SENSITIVE FANNISH FACE According to Burbee, a fan can be identified by his
sensitive fannish face and the Strange Wild Look
there-on. Extension applied the modifiers to other fannish things and
characteristics.
SERGEANT SATURN The lettercolumn editor of the Standard mags for a best-
forgotten period; invented by Mort Weisinger. Doubtless a
progenitor of the Beanie Brigade, he exhibited the eccentricities of language
("killed another Xeno jug... open the bomb bay doors, Warteyes, we're
approaching New York... you may expect a VV [vaporized venom] rocket by return
mail...") identified with the more frenetic segment of fandom. Merwin started
to clean up the xeno jive-talk in '46, and killed the Sergeant off in
late '47.
SERIOUS CONSTRUCTIVE There's a bit of serious constructiveness in every good
little fan, but it's a label of questionable honor
because of the nature of the beast. A do gooder or self-appointed censor,
sometimes; he often believes that he has a Mission in Fandom, and labors for
some Lofty Purpose or Worthy Line of Endeavor. He may be the fannish
equivalent of the Rotarian or Chamber of Commerce booster; he likes to think
fandom or science fiction will be the better for his work. And sometimes he
is the organizer or builder who accomplishes an enduring work despite the
scoffing of Voldesfen. Walt Willis represents his type of fans as Serious
Constructive Insurgents, apparently indicating thereby adoption of the
constructive features of the Insurgent Movement.
SEVAGRAM (vanVogt) What we'll wind up ruling, by inevitable historical
process. At the end of The Weapon Makers a casual super-race
intruded, observed humanity briefly, and pronounced it the race that would
rule the Sevagram. It was finally revealed that the word came from a speech
by Gandhi; the Hindus believe that the village is the center of the universe,
and their word for "village" is "sevagram".
7APA 7th Fandom's APA, which collapsed even sooner than the fad did. Sally
Dunn was OE for its limited life (floreabat '53-4).
7th FANDOM (Silverberg:Ellison) was a group, mainly of neofen, who
flourished during the Sixth Transition. Bob Silverberg had
predicted that Sixth Fandom would presently be followed by Seventh Fandom;
when the black-bordered Quandry announcing Lee Hoffman's gafia arrived at
Harlan Ellison's apartment he called the HECon there (May '53) at which 7th
Fandom was "organized". Its members did not realize, apparently, that
historic eras do not end by some person's arbitrary decision. Early in 1954 A
BAS editorialized: "7th Fandom is really a gimmick employed by a group of
asinine teenagers to publicize themselves in order to get more egoboo than is
obtainable through conventional methods". That's a pretty accurate appraisal;
some people who were at least nominally 7th Fandomites went on to better
things as they matured, but 7th Fandom during its existence was identified
with such imbecilities as the overly-public sessions of stewing and wooing
that forced the MidWestCon to move from Beatley's, and other idiot-child
capers chronicled here under Con sub SFCon, Haircream, and Doors. Its passing
in 1955 was not lamented.
770 The otherwise undistinguished NOLaCon's gifts to fandom were the exposure
of the Lee Hoffman Hoax and this most famous of smoke-filled rooms. It
was a two-day session in room 770 of the St. Charles Hotel -- Max Keasler's
room -- and noted for the vast quantities of gin and creme de menthe disposed
of [separately, we hope] and the amount of noise that filtered out of the room
thru the ventilating system.
SEX The great majority of fans are Tho hurled by Campbell's execration
male, and it has been asserted From its original elevation
that females cannot be the psycho- It still maintains a stfnal station
logical type of the SF fan, tho As a sensitive fannish recreation.
there are many femmefans to refute
this. In addition there are sweethearts, wives, daughters, sisters, etc, of
male fans who tag along at fan gatherings, make some appearance in the
fanzines, and assist in dirty work like mimeoing.
It is generally believed that Joe Fann is later than average in
associating with the other sex; at any rate, it was some two years after 1938
(when the average fan was 18) before love affairs received any great notice in
fan discussions, tho there had been some isolated eroticism earlier among the
Futurians, Moonrakers, etc. Since 1940 both generalizations and particulars
on fan-meets-femme have appeared frequently in conversation and writing, and
among the more mature Britishers have sometimes reached shockin' depths.
Whether fans are actually more or less promiscuous than other people is
an unsettled point, tho from the way they talk you'd think there'd be no doubt
about it. Outstanding exponents of an affirmative attitude are Insurgents and
Sexocrats (followers, the latter, of a philosophy founded 1949 by Ray Nelson;
its tenets are about what you'd expect). Frequently quoted is John W
Campbell's dictum, Sex and Science Fiction Don't Mix -- tho it's rarely given
in its proper sense; JWC merely meant that stf runs distinctly less to
pornography than, say, detective or Western pulpwork. A few research projects
like Bob Tucker's Little Kinsey Report and the Liverpool group's Sex-and-
Sadism symposium appear to contradict Campbell as his gagline is usually
interpreted.
FULLY CERTIFIED SEX FIENDS (Harris:Eney) A sinister international group,
originally the Union of Fully Certified Sex
Maniacs, who operate organizations and enterprises whose nature and purpose
can easily be deduced by anyone interested in the subject matter. A junior
league, Young Fiendom, has been mentioned.
SF BOOK-OF-THE-MONTH CLUBS After the Second World War a number of attempts
were made to offer selections well-chosen from the
flood of books which began to appear about 1948. Fantasy Guild was one of
several semipro attempts at a book-of-the-month club for stfnists; this one,
HQ in San Francisco, chose Heard's The Lost Cavern and Others as its
first selection, and World of Null-A as its second. It lasted at least
thru August 1948, and even distributed some dividend books, such as And
Some Were Human, to its membership. The Fantasy Book Club of New York,
November '48, planned a bimonthly bulletin and offered such fine selections as
The Porcelain Magician, Skylark III, Without Sorcery, and Pattern
for Conquest. A more fannish attempt at a book club was the Fantasy and
Science Fiction Book Club -- no relation to the prozine or bookshop of this
name -- hatched by Ron Rentz in 1952 which was supposed to be non-profit and
doubtless was. Its first (and only) selection was Kurt Vonnegut's Player
Piano. Doubleday launched its successful (commercially, that is) SF Book
Club in 1953. In England, Sidgewick & Jackson publishers operate a Science
Fiction Book Club, offering a bimonthly list of cheap [but reportedly good]
reprints, at 4/6 to 6/ (:65¢-85¢).
It strikes your chronicler that the error of these clubs lay in selling
good, and expensive, books from the SF specialist publishing houses, which
most fans would get anyway even if special arrangements were not made.
Doubleday and Sidgewick & Jackson did things on the large scale and could
produce cheapsky stuff with low overhead.
SF INTERNATIONAL Fans in Europe and America were organized under this name by
Julian May (who turned out to be a femmefan) and Lyell Crane
between 1948-51. A highly irregular newsletter, INTERIM NEWSLETTER, was
produced. Everett Winne, on the club's breakup, persuaded many of its 250-odd
members to join N3F.
SFA The Science-Fiction Association, an organization with HQ in Great Britain
which arose in 1937, held three conventions ("annual meetings") each more
successful than the last, and went dormant with the outbreak of World War II.
(Unlike the BFS, it could not carry on its official business without the
members of the Council meeting in person.) The founders and leaders of the
SFA were those whom Webster calls First Fandom; some Americans were members.
SFL The Science Fiction League, launched in 1934 by Gernsback and Hornig,
sponsored by Wonder Stories. An imposing (but powerless) board of
directors included prominent fen like Ackerman. Members got insignia and
stationery 'n stuff blazoned with the group's emblem (illustrated on the Fan-
Dango Award); they were supposed to propagandize stf (little stickers were
planned for the purpose) and promote it by "personal solicitation" (i.e. a
peptalk) whenever they could buttonhole a victim. The SFL department of
Wonder Stories reported activities of locals and of fandom in general,
announced proposed new locals, listed new members and addresses, and carried
the Science-Fiction Tests. Under TWS the League was continued, but more
commercialized, and the department was often used to blurb future issues.
In the course of time the League enrolled several thousand readers, tho
most of these never did anything more than send in their names, and some were
duplicate enrollments or pen-names. It was hoped that the SFL could become
the general fan organization, but this was dashed when non-payment of young
authors (the fault of a department of the company not under Hornig's control)
and natural rivalry brought on the ISA-SFL war and the expulsion of Wollheim,
Sykora, and Michel.
The chief importance of the SFL in fandom was in the chapters that were
set up, of which the most important were LASFL, QSFLs, GNYSFLs, Leeds SFL and
other locals with different names, like the PSFS. In these titles by "SFL" we
understand "chapter of the SFL". By the rules only one chapter could be
established in a city, except in cities over 1,000,000. Three members were
required for setting up a chapter; most such three-man chapters were short-
lived. A rule which soon lapsed made the chapter-member with the lowest
serial number Director.
Of other rules there were few; one was that members promise to answer
with reasonable promptness all (non-commercial) correspondence addressed to
them as members. The organization was moribund before the end of 1941.
SFS Science Fantasy Society, sometimes with a prefixed English ---. It was
organized just after the Whitcon by Ted Tubb, Ken Slater, Vin¢ Clarke,
and a few others. It had an elaborate regional bureaucracy which amounted to
nothing and a mailing system built around SF News, published by the Epicentre
bhoys; the irregularity of the latter (the latter publication, clot)
played hell with activity, and eventually Slater, who had been working
Operation Fantast independently before the foundation of SFS, cut loose and
set up on his own again. SFS ceased to exist shortly thereafter.
SHAGGOTH 6 At the Third Eastern Convention in 1937, Pohl and Dockweiler and
some spiritus frumenti pirated an elevator and gave it this
Lovecraftian name. The operator and building manager went up & down, up &
down, chasing it. This continued for some quarter of an hour.
SHAGGY DOG STORIES The original shaggy dog story was about a man in Great
Britain who advertised that he'd lost a shaggy dog. (This
is clean, so read on. Well then, don't.) An American found a dog which he
thought was the one, and after a series of harrowing adventures which the
teller of the story will string out to immense length reached England and the
flat of the man who'd advertised. Staggering to the door, with the dog beside
him, he said to the resident, "Did you advertise you'd lost a shaggy dog?"
The Britisher looked down and said, "Yes -- but not that shaggy."
The point of the story, it seemed to Speer, is that one is led to expect
a point, and then there is none. If the Briton had looked at the battered
American when he said "not that shaggy" there might have been a feeble point
in it, but as it is, there's none at all.
Other stories have been told on the model of the original, not
necessarily long ones. Example: a man goes into a restaurant and proceeds to
order potatoes, which he stuffs into his ears. "M'Gawd!" exclaims someone,
"why are you stuffing those potatoes into your ears?" "Potatoes!?" cries the
man. "I thought they were cabbages!"
Easily confused with shaggy-dog stories are surrealistic jokes, since
both are double-inverted humor.
RICHARD S(harpe) SHAVER Fantasy author whose stories in Amazing, 1944-48,
raised one of the most spectacular feuds ever to hit
the world of stfandom. The business actually began with a letter in a 1944
Amazing offering Shaver's Mantong alphabet, which allegedly assigned meanings
to all the letters of the Roman alphabet that gave the secret Occult Meaning
of all human words. (They never did explain how to use it on languages with
different alphabets.) In March 1945, with "I Remember Lemuria!", Shaverism
really got under way. Tho, it's said, much of his stuff was re-written by RAP
or one of his stable the general theme of the Shaver Mystery was Shaver's very
own. This Mystery -- an inaccurate word, since it was no mystery to those
who'd seen other of Palmer's antics -- related to existence of mCLASS=""
deroes in caverns under the Earth, and was only a facet of the vaster Shaver
Mythos. This latter, developed in later stories, proclaimed the existence of
a race, the Elder Gods, who by avoiding Dis continue to develop thruout their
immortal lives. (Dis, short for "disintegrant energy", was an insidious stuff
which acted as you'd expect in a full-strength blast and even when attenuated
saturated the neurons and caused unsane thought -- very like Original Sin in
some other mythological systems.) Once they inhabited Earth, but when Sol
began to give off Dis they first built a giant cavern system under the surface
(the "Caves") and, finding this ineffective as protection, evacuated the
planet, leaving behind their radiation-contaminated super-machines ("Elder
Mech") and a few hopeless cases of Dis-infection, the Abandondero. ("Dero"
means "disintegrant energy robot": somebody whose mind has been destroyed by
the Dis-saturation of neurons mentioned above.) These became the ancestors of
surface humanity and the deroes of the caverns; the latter now use the
abandoned Elder Mech to control the surface dwellers and make war on one
another, at which point things stood when Shaver's electric welder began to
talk to him. (A sane cave-dweller [Tero, or integrant energy robot] had
decided to Reveal All to him.) Shaver entered the Caves -- ten miles north of
Amherst, Mass, according to a personal communication -- checked, and brought
back the information which he incorporated into his stories, guarded from Dero
vengeance by the sane cavedweller, Nydia.
This might have been an amusing and ingenious piece of fantasy, but
Palmer published it, and demanded that it be accepted, as fact. Fans, as
might be expected, grotched most acutely at such a claim, seeing in it the
revolting nadir of Palmerism; the completion of his shift from fictionalized
science to profitable superstition in the name of commercial appeal to the
boob element.
In February '46 Palmer wrote to Fantasy News claiming that fandom had
missed a great opportunity by failing to deluge him with praise for the
Lemurian stories: "Overnight a new fandom has sprung up, with a powerful
organization which will get all the credit. All the fans can do now is sit
helplessly back and watch the fireworks..."
A sample of the fireworks: June '46, Assistant Editor Hamling announced
in a letter to Speer's weekly Stefnews that Palmer had cracked up and was
confined in an asylum. A long-distance call to Ziff-Davis having confirmed
that Palmer was "seriously ill" and Hamling was doing his job for the present,
Speer broadcast the word. Palmer (no noticeable straitjacket) wrote an
indignant denouncement to Fantasy Times, calling it all a vile hoax by the
fans -- but apparently got the signals mixed with Hamling, who wrote in the
same issue of FT that it had all been a deliberate trick on his part. All to
impress people he claimed to care nothing for.
Ackerman was leader of the campaign to get fans to boycott and fight the
Ziff-Davis mags with all available resources, but others contributed: a
meeting of the QSFL solemnly passed a resolution expressing the opinion that
the Shaver "Cave" Stories actually endangered the sanity of their readers, and
bringing the menace to the notice of the Society for the Suppression of Vice
[for which adherence to an even worse enemy of sense and sanity they will
undoubtlessly spend several thousands of years in Hell]. A PhilCo discussed a
proposal that a 1000-signature petition be organized to get Amazing and
Fantastic Adventures banned by the Post Office, but this imbecility Gott
sei dankt did not meet with approval.
Palmer, who did not look for his readership among fans anyway, could
afford to ignore such measures and, finding fans falling away, established the
Club House, under Rog Phillips, in 1947, allegedly to seduce enough fans to
split fandom's opposition. Results are told under Graham-Ackerman feud.
The move, if actually so intended, was successful in that fan sniping
faded away -- or, as one FAPA member put it, whenever there was a showdown
most fans refused to stand up for principle -- but the cease-fire came about
not so much thru the operations of the Club House as thru (1) the fact that
fan protests' ineffectiveness led us to stop in disgust and (2) the rise of
the Insurgent Attitude about this time, which found matter for ridicule in the
concept of the Dignity of Science Fiction.
SHORT-SHOT (Burbee) A small fanzine of limited circulation, often of the
individzine beta type. It is circulated, sometimes with a typed
short note, as a substitute for the letters the writer is too rushed to
produce. Burbee invented the term for Wm Rotsler's Kteic Magazine.
SICK SICK SICK JOKES A fannish fad, like boptalk, cuddlypets, and so on.
They are anecdotes, gaglines, etc, which supposedly make
the auditor shudder in revulsion, on getting the point; assuming that he is
tenderer-hearted than a ghoul, or has taste in jokes. And some use the phrase
simply to mean off-beat humor, tho it is incorrect to do so. Often the SSS is
pure dialogue without any stage-setting, like: "Hell, Aesop, if you've got
something to say, say it", or "Gee, Mary, don't those three criminals
up there look silly?"
SHANGRI-LA Los Angeles, so called by its fanhabitants because it was the best
place for a fan to land if he was moving or being moved about the
country, what with the LASFS and other advantages of LA.
SILKSCREENING A method of reproducing illustrations in solid color. Paint
is applied thru a stencil -- a different stencil for each color
-- which is supported by the silk backing and therefore doesn't need to be
interrupted by the little bridges that hold conventional stencils together.
SILLY STORY The MFS Silly Stories fit into several classifications of fan
humor. They are said to have been composed back in the days of
the First Transition, when the MFS had virtually no contact with fandom; but
when read at meetings they set the morons rolling on the floor with laughter.
They are the source of such exciting words as fout, nank, and Twonk's disease.
In 1948 when the club again became active and were visited by fans from
Outside they found these tales still effective and confidently predicted a
nationwide Era of the Silly Story, for confirmation of which you need but
glance at your newspaper.
SILP (Jacobs) The manner in which a Nuclear Fizz is drunk by the knowing --
close enough to a sip to permit enjoyment, close enough to a gulp to get
it down before it eats thru the glass or corrodes your teeth.
SIMPLIFYD SPELNG (Ackrmn) Generally speaking, the spelling reforms that have
been proposed by progressives from Franklin and Webster thru
Theodore Roosevelt down to the present day. Fans are somewhat in advance of
general practice in this regard, as witness the use of such constructions as
tho and thru in this dictionary. Speer originally used an even more radical
form, with substitution of f for ph, suppression of gh's and other silent
letters, ktp. However, even when following simplifyd rules orthodox spelling
will be used when otherwise creations so barbarous as to divert attention from
the text would be produced. Even with Ackese abandoned, Ackerman carried it
to an extreme, as witness: "After sorting for days & days after the deadline
thru 1000s & thous&s of xlnt entrys submitted from evry town & omlet of the 4
seas and 7 corners of the world your editors r barely able to announce..."
etc. Without consistency, the J sometimes used y for "long i" and sometimes
indicated it by e after the consonant, as in "nite"; sometyms he would spell
final -ed as -t when it is so pronounced, ktp. There is no truth in the rumor
that his purpose in all this was to make English so rational that we wouldn't
need to learn Esperanto.
SLAN (vanVogt) Superman produced by mutation from humans; the word is
sometimes used to mean any superhuman mutants, but in the story they
were the children of Samuel Lann and their descendants. These folk had
"tendrils" in the hair that gave the power of telepathy, with greater than
human intelligence, strength, and endurance as a byproduct of their real
advance: a nervous system of transcendent resilience and complexity, adapted
to the demands of mechanistic civilization. Because the central character in
the story was a youth in unsympathetic surroundings, and because of the
obvious similarities to fans' dreams of greatness, the unserious claim to
slanhood became the Third Fandom parallel to Second Fandom's half-serious
star-begotten claims.
SLAN SHACK An ancient dream of fans (well, dating back to 1938, at least).
The idea is to have a place where fans live together, sharing
expenses and bumming off one another, and where they can decorate the walls
and halls appropriately and scatter their collections all around. The first
realization of this dream was the Flat, in London. It was soon followed by
Futurian House and a long line of successors. In 1943 appeared Slan Shack
itself, which gave its name to the idea (previously called by the more formal
name of science-fiction house). Here dwelt the Ashleys, Liebscher, and
Weidenbeck, and later EE Evans; they moved en masse from the original Slan
Shack in Battle Creek to another site on Bixel Street, Los Angeles, cheek by
jowl with the LASFS clubroom. (It was the ground floor of a duplex next door.
Its upper floor, "Slan Shack Annex", was rented occasionally to struggling fen
and pros.) The place didn't break up till the building was torn down in March
'48 to make room for an office building. Outgrowth of this was the idea of
Slan Center, which Ashley conceived in early '43 as a whole block of
slanshacks (to be built on the outskirts of LA) with central clubroom and
publishing plant. Nothing came of this last notion.
These establishments are more or less natural developments from the
fraternity and nationalism of fandom, coupled with the rise of the average
fan's age to self-supporting and home-leaving time. Up to half a dozen of
them have existed at one time, such as Tendril Towers (Jacobs & Cox, in LA),
The Ivory Birdbath (Youngs & Stark, in Cambridge), Granny's House (Kerkhof and
others, in DC) and several others mentioned in other parts of this volume.
OLIVER KING SMITH (Tucker) offers a Fight-a-Feud service for Disgruntled Fen
("broken friendships a specialty"). OKS, who signed and
sent out the letters announcing the pseuicide, was said to be a college friend
and room-neighbor of Singleton's, and got royally toasted by the authorities
for his involvement with zombie, but was not actually a fan. Tucker's use of
the name had no connection with the actual bearer thereof.
SMOKE-FILLED ROOM Originally the term for the behind-the-scenes activity
concerning voting on the following year's consite, by
analogy with the SFR of political conventions. But now it simply designates
any hotel room where fans gather during a convention to drink and discuss.
SNAPZINES Back in the 40s Joe Gibson attempted to hoax fandom by inventing a
sister, Jay Gibson, who -- among other activities -- produced
fanzines which she dubbed snapzines because they were a snap to produce and
mail. In the autumn of 1953 the term was adopted to describe the informal,
single-sheet newsletters such as Magnus' Saturday Morning Gazette (aka SMUG)
and Charles Wells' GREY, which were also a snap to produce, tho mailing a
single-sheeter rather'n a full-size fanzine for 2¢ wasn't very sound
economics. Short-shots and letter-substitutes fall in this same category,
more or less.
SNEARYISMS Tho overtly accidental, a good many of the typos of Rick Sneary
("The Great Illiterateur", WAW said of him) were so dazzlingly
appropriate as to seem deliberate, or so eccentric that they staggered the
beholder; such constructions became known by their creator's name.
SNOGGING (Anglofandom) A British word referring to the indoor sport
Americans call necking. Refinements on it are numerous, each more
stimulating than the last.
SOCIALISM This word denotes any of a wide range of ideas, but the central
notion is collective ownership and control of the major vital
industries. Income proportionate to one's actual contribution is usually a
feature. Ownership and control by the government, the consumers, or labor-
management unions may be contemplated (these are state socialism,
cooperatives, and syndicalism or guild socialism, respectively). The US
Socialist Party, to which several liberal fans of old belonged (apparently
none today do) opposed the use of force to change the system (as by
revolution) and insisted on a legal, evolutionary change. Early stf
prophesied future collectivist or socialist societies, but since about 1948
warning against the evils of statism in such a setup has been more prevalent
in our whitherings.
SOCIETY An organization of individuals working along the same lines who may
be aided by hearing what each other are doing. In fandom the word
has been used loosely for various organizations which include the ARS, BIS,
PSFS, SAPS, MFS, SFS, LASFS, and WSFS.
SOCIOLOGY The study (some say "science") of man in his social relations, as
opposed to the studies of man as an individual. The field covers
politics, economics, history, ethnology, anthropology, institutions, and
folkways, and during Second and Third Fandoms was understood to refer
especially to social problems.
There had been considerable sociological discussion stirred up in the
pre-NewDeal period by such proposals as Technocracy, which were put before
stfnists in stories like "The Revolt of the Scientists"; and the books of HG
Wells, Olaf Stapledon, et al, have always bristled with sociological
questions; but discussions did not become intense in fandom till the Michelist
speech at the Third Convention in 1937. Sociological issues in fan feuds and
other fan disputes have included too bewildering an array of topics to be
listed here.
SODOM OF THE SOUTH Was Savannah, Ga, during Lee Hoffman's residence there tho
not, naturally, because of it.
SOGGIES (Bentcliffe) a breakfast food, at first ("doesn't snap, crackle, or
pop... just lies there") and in this form the ancestor of the London
O's Crottled Greeps. Later, they were cartoon-characters done by Eric and
coeditor Terry Jeeves for Triode; these were vaguely humanoid.
SOMA (Margaret StClair) A fabulous drink appearing in various fannish and
minor pro epics. It actually exists as a sort of sacramental wine (the
astringent, narcotic juice of Sarcostemma viminale) in the Hindu
religion.
SONODISCS (Ackerman) Because of their love of music, most fans have record
players available; and around 1940 some fan platters were produced
-- everybody at a fan meeting or party saying hello to auditors, some
dramatized "radio plays", and an issue of a sonodisc periodical ("the only
fanmag with round edges") from Shangri-LA. Daugherty recorded much of
the DenVention, including Heinlein's speech, "The Discovery of the Future", on
his 78s. Wartime difficulties put an end to most plattering, and afterward
wire and tape recorders were handier.
SOUTH GATE IN '58 (Rex Ward:Sneary) Yes, it's true that Rick Sneary didn't
make up the slogan which will probably be associated with
him forever. The phrase was the motto of the longest-range convention
campaign ever mounted, Rick having begun it in 1948 in the columns of
SPACEWARP, where his regular "1958" appeared for several years. Tho he
gafiated briefly in 1951 a comeback in 1955, and the persistence of his
slogan, put his movement over the top at the SoLACon.
SPACE OPERA (Tucker) A hack science-fiction story, a dressed-up Western;
so called by analogy with "horse opera" for Western
bangbangshootemup movies and "soap opera" for radio and video yellowdrama. Of
course, some space operas are more crass about their nature than others; early
Captain Video TVcasts were a hybrid of original space scenes and footage from
old Western movies (purporting to represent a Spy Ray checking up on the
Captain's Earthly agents). Terry Carr once unearthed a publication genommen
Space Western Comics, in which a character named Spurs Jackson adventured in a
futuristic Western setting with his "space vigilantes", and the old prewar
Planet Comics intermittently ran a strip about the Fifth Martian Lancers and
their struggles with rebel tribesmen.
SPACEWARP Something that when you go into it in a straight line you come out
at a different place, and/or going in a different direction, than
you should according to Newtonian physics. Fans are always wandering into
such things in strange cities and getting losted. A slightly different affair
was the turntable on which the Shirley-Savoy in Denver was mounted, so that
the DenVention attendees could start near the hotel, walk for blocks and
blocks, and still be near the hotel. Mention we must Art Rapp's fanzine of
this name, keystone of Fifth Fandom, which introduced such things as Steinpix,
the helicopter beanie, and R*O*S*C*O*E to fandom.
SQUINK BLOG The Seattle SAPS members (Wally Weber chief culprit) published a
series of almost unbelievably bad stories under this pename,
claiming it to be the nom de plume of "a stf writer whose name you'd recognize
instantly". Tho probably meant for humor, they were so appalling that they
weren't even successful as burlesques.
STANDARD SIZE Of fanzines, the local size for quarto paper -- 8½x11 in
America and 8x10 in England. For prozines, about 8x10, despite
the fact that most prozines are now digest size.
STANDARD TWINS Thrilling Wonder Stories and Startling Stories, in the days
when both were edited by Sam Merwin jr and published (by
Standard Magazines) alternate months.
FIRST STAPLE WAR In 1934 Bob Fandom! I sing of that heroic crew
Tucker Who struggled not for love of egoboo;
announced, in Brass Tacks, To higher aims their ghodlike spirits rose:
formation of the Society for Their sole desire was to improve the proz.
the Prevention of Wire Staples
in Science Fiction Magazines; the dictator of the organization, of course,
being Tucker. Recruits to the number of about 35 came, with suggestions for
such things as rubber staples, or sticking the magazines together with chewing
gum -- a different flavor each month. At last Don Wollheim could endure it no
longer, and precipitated the First Staple War by launching the International
and Allied Organizations for the Purpose of Upholding and Maintaining the Use
of Metallic Fasteners in Science Fiction Publications in the United States of
America, Unltd. (The "First" apparently by analogy with "First World War", a
name already common in 1934.) Wollheim was Grand High Cocolorum of the force,
and all other members had suitable titles, except one suspected of being a spy
who was deprived of his title. There were some twoscore members in all, and
several Fortresses (locals) existed.
Not satisfied with mere conservatism, Wollheim at length announced the
Platinum Plan. In accordance with this, wire staples were to be made of
platinum; then, after the stfnist had finished reading the magazine, he could
take out the staples and sell them for more than he paid for the magazine.
This would boom the circulation of stf magazines and carry science fiction to
the world.
As in other mock wars such as the FooFoo-Ghughu strife, the fronts on
which direct battle could be joined were very limited, but such engagements as
occurred practically all went in favor of the metallic forces. (Their
military arm called itself the Ultra-Violet Shirt Shocked Troops, in mockery
of the polychrome garments used by European political factions about this
time.) IAOPetc spies in Tucker's forces wormed their way into such a position
of trust that they published the second number of the Official Organ, and it
came out stuck full of wire staples! (Tucker quibbled about the difference
between proz -- which were all he mentioned -- and fanzines.) The "entire"
New York Episode (local) of the SPWSSTFM [Doc Lowndes] went over to Wollheim's
side.
The end of the war was a non sequitur. A prankster's letter was
published all solemnly in Brass Tacks, announcing that Tucker had died. By
publication time Tremaine had discovered that he'd been had, and declared
there'd be no more staple stuff in Brass Tacks.
STAR-BEGOTTEN (Wells:Griffiths) "Dear Mr. Bristol: Star-Begotten is
the title uv a book by the same name, written by HG Wells, in
which he develops the thesis that, since mutations are produced thru the same
agency uv the cosmic ray, and since science has been unable to trace the
source uv the aphoresaid ray [this was back in the early 40s], and since any
race with millions uv years uv background to it must be a benevolent race, and
since the Martians, iph they exist, must have a background reaching back thru
these millions uv years, therephore: the genius class -- Schopenhauer, Kant,
daVinci, Edison -- is a mutation, produced thru the agency uv the cosmic ray,
by the intelligently acting agency uv the Martians, with the intention uv
evolving this inpherior race uv Mankind to a state comparable to theirs. A
powerphul theme, given a psychological treatment instead uv a scientiphic-
action style. And, since these 'Star-Begotten' are those people with abnormal
intelligence, produced thru the direct or indirect agency uv beings upon
another planet, and since these 'Star-Begotten' are misunderstood, intuitive,
brilliant people, stphandom has adopted the name as a collective title phor
themselves." -- Ephless El.
STATE ORGANIZATIONS The first state organization was the OSA. The "era of
state organizations", so-bekannt, came with the Maine Stf
Association and IFF in 1939-40, and as the Michifans prepared to organize, the
Michiconference set up four state organizations under the MWFFF. After a year
or two the Michigan Federation was the only one of these that was more than an
organization in name only, without activity.
As states are inefficiently small for the 20th Century, so a state
organization of fans seems to lack the advantages of either a local or a
regional or general fan organization. Its only possible advantage is an
appeal to state pride to make fans want to become more active and add luster
to the glorious name of their state. Which, Virginia excepted, is nonsense.
STEAM (Watt:Bulmer) During a visit by Walt Willis to the Epicentre, Ken
Bulmer noticed the lid of a teakettle being lifted by a strange force
that seemed to reside in the vapor of the boiling water, and speculated on the
possibility of harnessing this energy for transportation and other socially
useful ends. Owing to international patent difficulties a competitive
organization, Hoffmanothing Inc, was formed independently in the United States
to supply the needs of the Fort Mudge Steam Calliope Company [Fort Mudge is
part of the Pogo mythos]; Hoffmanothing stocks were later taken over by
Ashworth's Amorphous Abstracts, Ltd, of England after a prolonged lawsuit
between the former and the Bulmer Aqueous Vapor Company. (They proved to
consist largely of colored steam.) After a conference at Cleveland Hoffwoman
and Bulmer organized an international group, Fair Steam, to supply the white
kind for general use.
STEINPIX The hektographed artwork that appeared in SPACEWARP around 1947 was
distinctive in that hekto-ink painting was used to give rich solid
colors after which line drawings were mimeoed in. The system was actually
suggested by Vaughn Greene, but Bob Stein was its greatest practitioner.
STENCIL (1) N. the wax-impregnated fibre sheets used as stencils in
mimeography; (2) v.t. to cut the prepositioned matter into stencil,
the last step before publication.
The stencil is typed with typeribbon disengaged, cut with a stylus
(smoothpointed piece of metal in a handle) and a rough celluloid sheet under
the stencil, or with a shading screen. An ineffable blessing is obliterine.
The number of copies from mimeoing is limited only by the durability of the
stencils (somewhere in the thousands), and stencils can be saved and filed
after use by blotting between newspapers for later re-running if necessary.
STF (Hoggenmiller:Ackerman) For- Some fans wonder, "What's the diff?"
merely the abbreviation for They don't care if you call it stf.
scientifiction, now pronounced But some, whose noise would make you deaf
"stef" or in a number of ways Vociferously yell for stf.
which George Charters reviews to The non-fan says, "A lotta guff --
your right. (It is NOT pronounced It's obviously only stf."
"ess tee eff"!!!) It is now a Myself, I laugh a scornful laugh;
short form for science-fiction, I think the damn thing might be stf.
and in the form stfsy for science- James White prefers to stand aloof,
fiction AND fantasy -- i e the But, pressed, he coyly murmurs "stf".
whole field of fantasy writing. Bob Shaw just shrugs the matter off.
Adjectival form stfnal means For all he cares, it could be stf.
pertaining to science-fiction, or And Walter Willis and his wife
sometimes to fandom. "St(e)fnist" Say "Erudition calls for stf."
was (1) proposed by Speer as a
substitute for "fan" on account Moral:
of the undesirable connotations Thus we can see the contradiction
of the latter word, but has come In people's names for stf.
to mean (2) any person interested
in fantasy -- fans, pros, and mere occasional readers. Such folk have also
been described as the stfnate, and rarely stfim.
STICKER A little gummed piece of paper, usually [about this long] and
having space for maybe four lines of type. Sometimes applied to the
letter sheet in lieu of letterhead, or more usually stuck to the envelope. It
may carry the fan's name, one or more of his publication's titles, names of
organizations, and descriptive words like "Scientifictionist"; others say
"Member Suchandsuch Organization", plug a convention, Esperanto, flying
saucers or some such thing, or maybe boost science fiction in general.
STIGWORT'S DISEASE Baffles the analysis of mundane pathologists. Walt Willis
discovered this subtle disease, which displays absolutely
no symptoms until the patient succumbs. You can go along, to all outward
appearances perfectly sound and healthy, for seventy or eighty years, and
then, zap! Over you go. Walt intends to Reveal All concerning this disease
in the pages of Reader's Digest as soon as he invents a miracle drug to cure
it with.
STRANGER CLUB In a stf series by Lawrence Manning, a club (motto, "Truth is
Stranger Than Fiction") where members met to tell and hear
"true" fantastic experiences. The name was taken by the Eastern Massachusetts
fan organization when they formed in February '40, and the members called
themselves Strangers. Members included Swisher, Widner, Suddsy Schwartz,
Singleton and a number of others; it was elements of this club that formed the
foundation for the N3F. The group threw a number of annual conferences in
Boston ("Boskones") and apparently got along with absolutely no internal
friction.
STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS A type of literature which tries to reproduce, as
accurately as possible, the manner in which ideas
flow thru the brain, one thought giving rise to another related to it in the
most unlogical way, employing shorthand symbols for familiar concepts the way
the mind does, ktp.
SUBZINE The type of general interest fanzine that is usually offered for
sale, as distinguished from exchanges like FAPAzines, news-sheets,
leaflets, one-shots, and other specialized types. Most subscription fanzines
have articles, stories, departments, a reader's lettercolumn, art work, and
all the other fixings. Club Official Organs are often of the nature of a
subzine. Sometimes people actually pay for them, but the fanzine that breaks
even is a very rare specimen, and it is customary to send out many copies as
samples, send them to pro editors and exchange gratis, and carry other
subscribers a long time in spite of non-response to expiration notices. Of
course, there are crimes by the editor, too; Reader and Collector for March
'41 utters these words of worth: "If you are unable to carry on for a period
of at least one volume (8-12 issues) with very few subscriptions -- if you
don't have the necessary equipment to turn out a legible and easily-read mag
-- if you don't have the time or ability to properly edit a magazine and
reduce the typographical errors to a minimum -- if you don't have enough
interesting material to enable you to run the magazine for a reasonable
subscription period with very little additional assistance -- if you are
unable to maintain a definite publication date -- THEN FOR GAWD'S SAKE DON'T
START A SUBSCRIPTION FANZINE!"
SUICIDE The ethics of suicide came up for considerable discussion at the time
of the pseuicide. In a high-strung bunch like fans are, it's not
surprising that suicide has reportedly been contemplated by some fans, causing
some worry to their friends, but the actual deed is probably rarer than among
most introverts. Joseph Hatch and Robert E Howard, weirdists, killed
themselves during the 30s; Robert Barlow and an unknown Detroit fan suicided
in the 40s. The most shocking suicides, tho, were those of Kent Moomaw and
Bill Courval, who, as told under Year of the Jackpot, apparently killed
themselves (1958-9) in despondency over their draft status and joblessness.
Unlike others they had made themselves pretty widely known in fandom and were
looked on as promising BNFs.
SUPERFAN Applied sarcastically to Claude Degler, or in humorous compliment to
many BNFs -- especially Redd Boggs.
SUPERMAN "A superman is a human being who has greater powers than the normal
person -- physical, mental, or possibly supernatural", says RR
Winterbotham. Speer distinguishes four types of Superman: (1) Super-
developed Homo sapiens, either thru special training like Doc Savage or thru
the advantages of a more advanced civilization than ours, like Eldred Crang in
the null-A series. (2) Homo sapiens with certain powers added, as by
constructive (rather than merely preventive) medicine -- e g Stephen Germaine
in Byrne's Colossus; by the environment of another planet, like the
Valerians in the Lensman series; by genetic selection of existing human
qualities, as the people in Beyond This Horizon; or by immortality
however acquired, like the protagonists of My First 2000 Years. (3)
Homo superior, humanoids with extra-human powers, like the Slans or many
another mutant. (4) Non-human superior races, such as super-intelligent
insects, e-t's, highly efficient robots, and intelligences of pure force.
Arisians and suchlike fit here. Type 3 is what is usually meant when fans
discuss the Superman: a new species of genus Homo.
The scientificomic character Superman is of some fan interest because he
is the creation of Jerome Siegel and Joe Schuster, who once published a
fanzine entitled Science Fiction, as fans are not loath to remark, tho all of
them agree Superman stinks.
SUPER-SCIENCE May simply indicate science advanced beyond present-day
knowledge -- i e the kind we have in all scientifiction.
Usually it indicates science so advanced that it is different almost in kind
from modern science, achieving results by entirely different and simpler
methods; the type that Arthur C Clarke illustrated in The City and the
Stars, and to a lesser degree in some of EE Smith's "epics", or "heavy
science" yarns like the Arcott Wade and Morey series.
SUPER SCIENCE FICTION SPECIAL (Hahn, je crois; Dockweiler called it the New
Science Fiction Special) "At about four-thirty
ack emma, while leering a trifle crookedly at the murals, Harry got The Idea.
Why not a Rummy's Stf Special? After a little thought, and some help from his
fellow sot and Jack [the bartender], he decided upon the concoction.
"Now, lean close. Fill a Tall Glass -- not completely, you yap, unless
you think you're good -- half gin, the rest ginger ale. Then, a dash of
bitters...two drinks had Harry (who detests Efjay) admitting that Forrest
might not be such a bad guy after all. A couple more and he went off on a
crying jag over an old, lost love of his." -- from an unpublished manuscript
by Harry Dockweiler, written probably in 1937.
SURPLUS STOCK To take care of accidents and various unforseenities APAs
require members to send the OE 3-5 more copies of a magazine
than are needed for the actual number of members. Getting rid of the OE's
resulting accumulation is sometimes a puzzle; you might see about buying some
if you want a sample of a given APA's output.
SURREALISTIC JOKES (Liebscher) A sort of humor in which the climax is
logical, according to a more or less wacky system of
logic. Example: the one about the Ostrich who came running up late to a
place where several other ostriches were standing with their heads in the
sand, looked around, and said "Where is everybody?" Surrealistic jokes are
not to be confused with shaggy dog stories, where there is no point, logical
or otherwise.
SWAMP In various words popular in Quandry-fandom meant the Okefenokee.
Swampside was specifically Savannah (any part of Georgia could be
meant) and Swamptone was the kind of paper on which Q and other Hoffman zines
were mimeoed. (It was a sort of green-tinged off-white.) Swamp water has
been portrayed as a beverage whose effects were more dreadful than Crottled
Greeps with a Blog chaser.
SWISHER INDEX or CHECKLIST RD Swisher began, and Bill Evans and Bob Pavlat
continued, the project of making a listing of all
the fanzines that have ever appeared anywhere. This monstrous [purely in a
physical sense, of course] job is probably the most difficult project ever
carried out in Fandom.
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.