Fifty years? That's not too many. Or is it?
It was for me. As you regular readers know, for half that time I've been faking my connection to SFFY, thanks to fans who have kept the tradition alive on my behalf, lo, this last quarter century.
Legend has it that the ancient fannish diety of duplication, GhuGhu, was born of a jelly pan, and the souls of all who worship at his shrine turn the brilliant indelible phurple of hektograph ink. Even the souls of those trufans who never touched a hek tograph would turn phurple with longing to pub an ish of their own.
With the spread of mimeography, there came an upstart deity called FooFoo, whose followers claimed to rid the Ghuists of their phurple tiny by ripping out their souls and disposing of them altogether. But unless the soul was strong enough to immediately reassert itself, this operation left former Ghuists merely empty shells that soon crumbled into gafia.
Bereft of their original bodies, the separated phurple souls migrated to new bodies, filling them with the Spirit of Duplication, no matter what means of reproduction might come into their hands. In these occupied bodies Sixth Fandom lives.
Ghu be praised that in 1976, when circumstances precluded my pubbing my ish myself, Terry Hughes was there, a man of true Sixth Fandom sensibilities, to step into the breach. Had Terry not been willing to take on the tasks of editing and publishing the 1976 issue, there would have been no more SFFYs.
"So?" you ask with a yawn.
"Ah," I reply, "Had SFFY died in '76, what would have happened to the final chapters of Calvin Aaargh's serial, 'Stars of the Slave Giants' (at twenty five years, the longest running regularly-appearing serial in science fiction history) and Nalrah Nosille's welcome revival of '! Nissassa' in '96? What of those beautiful covers by Steve Stiles, Dan Steffan, Stu Shiffman, Ross Chamberlain, and Ray Nelson --every one of them a classic? What of all the terrific articles by fine fannish mind s too numerous to cite?"
It was with my retirement from all but a nominal position that the very best issues of SFFY came about. Dan Steffan, with Ted White, took the figurative helm in 1981. The lustrum after that, Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden, with Stu Shiffman, hove to . Then Geri Sullivan and Jeff Schalles signed on and found themselves, like the Flying Dutchman, sailing on and on and on lustrum after lustrum without respite, hauling on rich brown, then Andy Hooper, and now the Old Original Terry Hughes Himself, to be tied to the masthead.
So Sixth Fandom lives. And I survive idly in the phurple ghlow of their efforts.
It certainly is a whonderful thing.
Data entry by Judy Bemis
Hard copy provided by Geri Sullivan
Data entry by Judy Bemis
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