5 to 5 with a Typical s-f Fan
(43,200 seconds in the LIFE of)
reported by
ELLIOTT ZANDS*
Crossword puzzles usually found on this page DELAYED IN THE MAIL
(Editor's note: for months and years and ages and eons and flfiff our reporters have been accumulating facts on the lives of a glik of fen. Thor tabulated statistics have been entered on punched f/x tapes and fed through our time warped MAgNIACjr The results are now ready for presentation.
Lest We Forget - Acknowledgments are now and herewith dispensed (with)
5:00 a.m. Fan is sound asleep. Audio-translator is whirring away, sound tapes being fed in automatically. The scanning device is set for page-by-page focusing. A stack of s-f magazines is fed into the automatic feed funnel where a conveyor carries them pastt the automatic page turner. The pages are photographed at the rate of ten per second and the microfilm is developed immediately. The film travels past the dryers and blowers and thru the scanning camera before the audio-translator is automatically tuned to di-phasic bi-linear heteroamalgamated transergs photometrically co-ordinated.
7:00 a.m. Fan is awakened by the flk flk. s-f fan turns off auto-translator and turns on radio scanner tuning it to the early morning edition of the s-f News. s-f News commentator reads titles of all the latest s-f published during the night and follows with spot reviews of the lead stories in each. While listening to this, s-f fan washes, dresses and has breakfast. Then s-f fan straps on wrist watch with built in radio and tunes it to the morning program of serial science fantasy stories. At the same time s-f fan hooks up portable viewscope for reading film pictures from the audio-translator tape.
8:00 a.m. Fan leaves for work with portable outfit complete with batteries. By listening to some stories and simultaneously reading other stories, s-f fan is almost able to keep up with all the s-f literature published.
9:00 a.m. Fan dashed madly into office, takes cover off typewriter, opens the mail and spreads enough work around on top of the desk to give the appearance of having been busily at work for at least an hour.
_____________
* No relation to the ZANDS of TIME, LIFE & FORTUNE
9:07 a.m. Fan leaves by back door and dashed madly to the nearest newsstand and purchases all the latest s-f literature.
9:07 1/2 a.m. Fan checks time signals with portable wrist watch radio and plugs portable transmitter into battery (or maybe the other way around) anyway, s-f fan sends coded signal to s-f fan2
(Editor's note: - Perhaps we should have mentioned at the outset that our survey showed that the typical s-f fan is twins, this being the only possible practical arrangement for keeping up with all the current science fiction publications and still doing 8 hours work a day.)
(Junior Editor's note: That should read "7 1/2 hrs.")
9:08 a.m.Fan2 immediately leaves for work and shows up in Fan1's place at 9:08 3/4 a.m. and starts doing Fan1's work. Meanwhile Fan1 is busy sorting out stories & books preparatory to a day's solid reading of s-f. Fan2 turns on portable radio and clips on ear phone and listens while Fan1 reads.
12 noon Fan2 leaves for lunch.
1:00 p.m. Fan1 returns from lunch, and continues with the day's work. Meanwhile Fan2 reads s-f, taking up where Fan1 left off.
2:00 p.m. Fan calculates percentage increase in reading rate necessary in order to keep up with all the s-f that is published.
2:10 p.m. Fan enrolls in Road-to-Rapid-Reading-Course.
3:00 p.m.Fan writes letters to editors of 153 fanzines and encloses several paragraphs of critical caustic comments. Makes arrrangements to attend science fiction convention and writes letter to s-f mags requesting their editors to speak at convention. Offers to write their speeches for them. Outlines several speeches.
3:30 p.m. Gets fitted for FM bi-audicals. Tries them out by listening to several radio programs at once (one long-wave, one short wave). Very pleased with the bi-audicals.
4:00 p.m. Remembers invitation to garden party and hastily departs.
4:10 p.m. Shows up at garden party where there are in evidence several long lines, obviously refreshment lines. Fan takes place at end of line.
While waiting Fan catches up on the new s-f full length serialized-in-one-issue-trilogies just off the press. With the aid of achromachtic-silicoated prismatic tri-focals, Fan is able to read 6 best-sellers at a time (three with each eye). Fan makes the necessary adjustment for micro-focusing, zips a roll of microfilm in the stereoptochronometerXL5 and connects it with portable miniature TV screen with filter adapter and 3-dimensional tuning. Fan watches moving pictures while tuning in s-f serial-
Meanwhile Fan2 is busy working on the local fanzine, writing reviews of previews** and digests of wry jests* and Ed. notes of "said quotes."
(Ed. note: --Yes, this is a typical fan. Typical in the best s-f tradition which is to condense paragraphs into sentences, and sentences into phrases & phrases into singlewords which require reading-between-the-letters, so be it understood that by typiCal s-f Fan we mean a science-fiction fan who is a typist for the University of California, therefore, typi
Opinions expressed and facts reported in the adjoining article ain't necessarily so!
5:00 p.m. Fan arrives at head of line. Throat parched and dry and weary with fatigue fan says, "Make mine a frozen Dacquiris."
"I am very sorry but we serve only non-alcoholic beverages
in this line."
"No, this is not the cocktail line,
this is the punch line."
** We quote a typical excerpt:
Everybody is always telling me "Be Anything!" That's all I ever hear. Be anything. Be anything. And I answer back that I don't want to be anything because I don't want to be anything, except recently I decided I changed my mind and decided maybe I'll be anything after all because recently I found out that a pound of anything is equivalent to 11,400,000,000 KW-hours. So 130 lbs. is equivalent to 1,482,000,000,000 KW-hrs. Statistics like that make a person think twice before deciding to not be anything. (I know it's ungrammaticalistic to casually split infinitives that way but that seems to be a byproduct of the practical application of E=mc2.)
* Such a daffynition of the word gladiator by using it in its s-f sense as follows:A smiling young lady from Niger Went for a ride with a tiger.They returned from the ride With the lady inside & The smile on the face of the tiger.
TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: the tiger, of course, was gladiator.
Data entry and page scans provided by Judy Bemis
Data entry by Judy Bemis
Updated June 28, 2015. If you have a comment about these web pages please send a note to the Fanac Webmaster. Thank you.