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Jack Speer
(from Madge's Prize Mss. 1938)
These predictions were made 24 August 38.
It seems to me little short of amazing, in a group of people confident as we are of the possibility of predicting future events from present knowledge, there have been so few attempts to forecast the future of Fandom. Yet certainly there will be changes; none know better than we that nothing is static.
To be sure there has been some talk of what science fiction will develop into but what of fandom? A word here and there but everything seems to stop with the World Convention in 1939. There is perhaps good reason for this: What happens at the convention will mold the future of fandom. So to predict fandom's future one must predict the outcome of the convention. The mere prediction of a thing might influence the probability of its happening!
Yet we do have five years behind us; we have seen fandom pass from one stage to another and it is reasonable to assume the transition to a third stage will be accompanied by some manifestations of the first change. And while admitting the chances are against my predictions' being correct I think they are more likely to come true than any other set of developments. So, the fool rushes in --
Most prophets will talk in terms of trends and ifs-and-buts and let it go at that. My predictions are based on trends and on the most probable of the ifs but I am going to try to make them concrete as possible.
After the World Convention is over we can expect a general letdown. There will be talk about the Convention, Convention accounts and perhaps wranglings over who went to what automat with whom; but I expect for at least six months after the Convention fan activity will be at a low ebb. And I rather doubt it will ever build up again to the point it will have reached just before the Convention.
It is not yet clear whether the Convention will take place before or after election time in FAPA. After these two events are passed there should be a long breathing spell. I am assuming the Wollheim group will lose most of the FAPA offices; this is a dangerous assumption but seems more likely than that it will stay in power another year. If it loses out things in the FAPA should be pretty tranquil and everything routine. If DAW and men should win again the Anti-Wollheimists can be expected to keep fighting another year or however long it may take. But the fighting won't be so fierce as that following the 1938 election.
I am also having to assume the Michelist motion will be defeated at the Convention. This is an even more precarious assumption as there is a strong possibility that, the Convention being held in New York, numerous Young Communist readers of stf, such as Herman Leventman, Leslie Perri and Jack Rubinson, whom most of us would not consider "fans", will swamp the Convention and carry the motion. However, in this case it will not make so much difference. If Michelism carries a group of fans will detach itself, I believe, and go off at a tangent; and we remaining behind will simply deny the Convention as the voice of fandom and continue much as before, discussing the ideologies objectively, as the English do. If Michelism loses I have no idea the head Michelists will stay with us, though some may return in after years. In either case fandom loses the most radical element.
One factor that will be almost completely disregarded in this discussion is the question of the increasing age of the fans. There will be so many things tending to let the average age advance only very slowly that this had best be passed by -- if indeed any significance attaches to chronological age in our group, which one might well doubt.
But to the trends. One big trend I foresee is a blurring of outline, a fusion of the "inner circle" with the mass of scientifictionists, as a result of cooperation by the pro editors and other forces. Our numbers have been somewhat augmented by the cessation of the old wierd-sf battle and merger of their two fandoms but the publicity now offered by all the professional science-fantasy magazines should increase our number many times. McPhail tells me of reading some amateur journal in a newspaper or magazine and writing for a copy. The boys who published it replied they'd had 50 calls for copies from that single mention!
There will be far reaching repercussions of this influx of demi-fans. For one thing it will no longer be safe to assume, in an article in Fantascience Digest, say, that practically all the readers also get the News Letter, for example. Articles and columns must perforce in the interest of greater completeness within themselves be less personal, more laboriously composed, less spontaneous.
This influx of a new market will also mean the eclipse of hectography among the subscription fanmagazines. Mimeograph and printed publications should come to have subscriptions running into the hundreds.
The subjects for writing will be more on the order of the First Fandom, too. Since the pro magazine editors have cooperated to bring this new audience in touch with our world we in turn will have to print more news of the pros and authors; would in fact have to do so to interest the newcomers.
The majority of fans will no longer be of the "Star-Begotten" type. The newcomers will provide a conservative element and a less brilliant one. We shall have to be more dignified in front of them.
Perhaps it is untrue to speak of them as a separate group since the whole will be fused into one. But there will still remain a less distinct inner circle and within that the very core of the Old Guard who stay with us. Graduated degrees of fan activity will extend all the way out to those who get only one fanmagazine and do not correspond at all. There already is a state of affairs like this on a small scale. Witness the wide variation in estimates as to the number of "real fans".
Another trend which might be noted is the tendency to discuss interesting books, ideas, movies, and so forth which are entirely outside the realm of stf.
When all this happens, the Second Fandom, in which we are living now, will be well behind us.
I shan't go so far as to say whether this Third Fandom will be the last; I rather think it won't. But the activities of the Second Fandom are swiftly coming to a head, culminating in the summer of '39. None plans beyond that; it's not safe. When the Convention is almost upon us some plans beyond it may be made but these will be few.
The FAPA will become a highly-sought-after honor for awhile and then due to the increasing accumulation of "dead wood" (comparatively speaking only) revisions have to be made and the membership limit probably abandoned.
The mere fact articles and stories will be published in mimeoed or printed form will affect the writing thereof. Too, the realization everything written or published in the FAPA goes into a permanent library in Philadelphia will cause the writers to take greater care. Writing won't be quite as much fun as it is now.
There will be compensations. With a letup in controversy those so inclined can take time off to pursue those little side-lines they've always wanted to follow. Larry Farsaci will be able to devote his whole time to his index of magazine stf without fear the Michelists will slip something over while he's not watching; in fact, it is highly probable the central authority (of course there will be a c.a. then) will appoint a committee to carry on the interrupted work of the Fantasy Magazine Service Dept. Others may follow other lines. Lowndes, if he cares to stay with us, can write poetry instead of answers to Sam Moskowitz. I'll confess there are things I'd like to have time to do, too: Take up Will Durant; get all my collections (now in Okla.) up here to DC and in order; bring that scrapbook and photo album up to date; there are parts of my diary still unwritten; I'd like to complete my listings of the comic dabblers; I have a faint vision of a ... Corpus Juris Fandom! Probably everyone has things like this he can do when there's time to relax.
In conclusion, some ifs should be considered. There is always the remote possibility of war, for example, I haven't met many fans physically yet so can't say whether I think many would be accepted by the selective draft but even if only a few are drafted into the army it would be highly advisable to suspend fan activity for the duration; otherwise, after the war were over and the fever had passed there'd be many a regret over what we'd written. And after the war, with many of the fellows embittered perhaps, and other profound changes having taken place, it would be difficult to restore the old round of fan activity in its entirety.
But the period from the fall of Fantasy Magazine to the Third Convention showed that Fandom as an entity is as tough as a boot. No matter what might happen to the old globe I think there'd always be a group that could be called "science fiction fans", expressing themselves without restraint to each other and speculating upon the future. (I might go off on a tangent here on the future of sf when space-flight is accomplished, synthetic life a fact and all the other things short of pure fantasy realized. See DRSmith.)
These, however, are the Ifs. This prophecy is supposed to be based in what I think has the best chance of happening. So, to recapitulate:
A degree of fusion between the inner circle and the promag audience in general; a trend toward conservatism; a movement toward the literary and away from the spontaneous; a relaxation of the heated controversy ...
The central idea of pre-fandom was science (the Gernsback influence).
The First Fandom discussed fiction and authors.
The Second Fandom interest centers around the fan personality.
The basis for the Third Fandom may well be no more than "fraternity".
Maybe I'm all wrong. I rather hope I am.
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(Translated from the original Ackermanese)
Data entry by Judy Bemis
Hard copy provided by Geri Sullivan
Data entry by Judy Bemis
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