BY ROBERT BLOCH
"Write something for the Bicentennial issue of Science Fiction Five-Yearly," said Lee Hoffman.
At first I hesitated. I have a grudge against the magazine. It seems like every time I read a new issue, some of my hair falls out.
But I have nothing against the Bicentennial itself. Why, some of my best friends are Bi-s.
And some of my best friends were around when the magazine was first started. They formed part of a group which was called Sixth Fandom, among other things.
The other things were epithets hurled at them by a group of young rebels who proclaimed themselves to be part of a new wave known as Seventh Fandom.
The concept of Seventh Fandom had been more or less officially established in another Hoffmaniacal magazine (Quandry #25) by a youthful fan named Robert Silverberg. Writing in late 1952, he predicted that the coming year would see the triumphant establishment of Seventh Fandom by such luminaries as Ish, Calkins, Hirschorn, Ryal, Wells, Bergeron, Semenovich, Anderson, Schreiber and Rosen.
(illo by Steve Stiles: sixth and seventh fandom fighting)
Well, aside from Calkins and Bergeron, I don't know if these people are even numbered among the living today. Silverberg is still alive, or so he claims. But most of the others have apparently rubbed themselves with vanishing-cream. The only hyperactive member of Seventh Fandom prominent in our midst is a name which Silverberg didn't even mention -- Harlan Ellison.
But Sixth fandom is very much around. Lee Hoffman writes novels. Bob Tucker writes on pay-toilet walls, and is still spry enough to enter them by crawling under the doors. Shelby Vick invented Vapo-Rub. Chuck Harris is -- as this year's catchword would have it -- viable. And despite the dreadful doings in Belfast, Irish fandom seems to be alive and well and writing pro-prose.
Thirty years is a long time, as my uncle in Sing-Sing used to say. (My uncle, poor soul, was a confirmed child-molestor, who hung around churches and molested children after their confirmation.)
And yet thirty years is nothing compared to the length of time certain members of First Fandom have endured. Every Worldcon is the scene of a First Fandom meeting -- and if anything, these affairs are noisier and more lively than current fandom's pot-parties or the Trekkie-orgies during which pins are stuck in mannikins fashioned out of the wax from Spock's ears.
Time is longer than anything, and it's amazing how many fen -- and pros -- survive. Last fall, at the first World Fantasy Convention, I came face-to-face with Manly Wade Wellman, H. Warner Munn and Frank Belknap Long. All three of them were already writing for Weird Tales when I read my first issue of the magazine back in 1927.
Come to think of it, I'm still around too. In the past year I've attended six conventions, written twelve new stories and two introductions, edited a book of Fred Brown's work, made two LP records reading my own stuff, and prepared four short-story collections to be published over the next few seasons. And if I can only involve myself in a government scandal or get caught sleeping with a call-girl, I may even write another novel.
No, I can't vouch for Seventh Fandom, but the very existence of this magazine is proof that Sixth Fandom lives.
At least it is living now, on June 23rd, 1976, the date on which these lines are written. Lee Hoffman tells me that the deadline for the issue is Labor Day, but I'm writing it now because there's no sense taking chances. I want to do it while I'm still alive.
As they say here in Hollywood, you never know when you'll get a better offer.
-- Robert Bloch
Data entry by Judy Bemis
Hard copy provided by Geri Sullivan
Data entry by Judy Bemis
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