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Fan Slants, v. 1, issue 1, September 1943
Page 23
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FAN SLANTS..................................................................25 [title in large rounded letters] A Beginner's Guide to Fandom [author's name in large script] By J. K. Aiken [centered] Reprinted from COSMIC CUTS----MAY '43 Science fiction Fans---stfans for short--- are queer. Their queerness varies but they agree on some things. All the active ones read professional stf mag-azines, called prozines in their argot. They complain that the stories are lousy, the stories worse, and the covers nauseating and indecent. Some even crticize he advertisements. But unlike other pulp consumers, they don't thereupon read something else. Instead they write to the editor and tell him what they think.... Then they eagerly buy the next issue to see whether he's printed their letters and done what they told him. And so they go on. Other stfans write and agree with their opinions, or, vituperativley don't. Soom they are meeting, forming ass-ociations, electing officials. In no time they begin to produce magazines of th-eir own, mimeographed on green or yellow paper, and full of...stf? No. Full of letters, articles and cartoons, all unintellagible to non-fans, and mostly sland-orous to other groups of stfans and to the prozines wich are their lifeblood. For some reason these fanzines often contain not very well drawn representations of the unclothed femail, Homo-Sapiens. Uncessingly fanzines die, are born, and abuse one another. They are the true offspring of stfans. Many stfans are like magpies. They collect pro-zines by the thousands. Their are stuffed with them so that they have to crawl over them to go to bed. They are thedespair of their famillies. Some of them read nothing but pro-zines. "There's never been a good story in Amazing since it started", they will say, stroking love-ingly their carefully preserved file of Amazings. "But Wells and Verne old stu-ff now.... and who's Stapleton?" Others collect so many that they have no to read them. "The plot of that's pinched from the June '32 Ast", they'll say...., "We we haven't read either one of them...just keep a plot index by skimming through the story to see if the plot's new". ( By plot they really mean scientific idea; as shrinking men to subatomic size, or travelling backward in time, or forming a Gal-actic Federation). "hack" is their favorite term of condemnation. It means that there is some remote for the accusation that some feature of the plot might con-cievably be said to have been used or no fewer than two occasions within the mem-ory of stfans, whether with different treatmnet, character types, action or don-ouncement is unimportant. Some stans are such veherent collectors that they wish to aqire every word thought or feed which might possibly be constructed as stf. They even collect books, old stuff like Wells and Verne, and the degraded stuff like ghost stories.. Some even go as far as to collect the non-fiction works of J.W. Dunne. Perhaps they think it will turn out to be stf. These collectors have no time for anything but collecting. Not even for sleep. But some go even farther. They collect books and music that could be regarded as concerned with stf, even if the orgionaters didn't so regard it. Their lot is hard, for they have no time no time to find out anything about the fields of their collection. Perhaps that is why they have not yet started to collect surrealistic art, which should just be their kettle of fish. But they will when theyhave found out how to save time by not breathing. Stfans are queer. The author of this article is a stfan, God help him.
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FAN SLANTS..................................................................25 [title in large rounded letters] A Beginner's Guide to Fandom [author's name in large script] By J. K. Aiken [centered] Reprinted from COSMIC CUTS----MAY '43 Science fiction Fans---stfans for short--- are queer. Their queerness varies but they agree on some things. All the active ones read professional stf mag-azines, called prozines in their argot. They complain that the stories are lousy, the stories worse, and the covers nauseating and indecent. Some even crticize he advertisements. But unlike other pulp consumers, they don't thereupon read something else. Instead they write to the editor and tell him what they think.... Then they eagerly buy the next issue to see whether he's printed their letters and done what they told him. And so they go on. Other stfans write and agree with their opinions, or, vituperativley don't. Soom they are meeting, forming ass-ociations, electing officials. In no time they begin to produce magazines of th-eir own, mimeographed on green or yellow paper, and full of...stf? No. Full of letters, articles and cartoons, all unintellagible to non-fans, and mostly sland-orous to other groups of stfans and to the prozines wich are their lifeblood. For some reason these fanzines often contain not very well drawn representations of the unclothed femail, Homo-Sapiens. Uncessingly fanzines die, are born, and abuse one another. They are the true offspring of stfans. Many stfans are like magpies. They collect pro-zines by the thousands. Their are stuffed with them so that they have to crawl over them to go to bed. They are thedespair of their famillies. Some of them read nothing but pro-zines. "There's never been a good story in Amazing since it started", they will say, stroking love-ingly their carefully preserved file of Amazings. "But Wells and Verne old stu-ff now.... and who's Stapleton?" Others collect so many that they have no to read them. "The plot of that's pinched from the June '32 Ast", they'll say...., "We we haven't read either one of them...just keep a plot index by skimming through the story to see if the plot's new". ( By plot they really mean scientific idea; as shrinking men to subatomic size, or travelling backward in time, or forming a Gal-actic Federation). "hack" is their favorite term of condemnation. It means that there is some remote for the accusation that some feature of the plot might con-cievably be said to have been used or no fewer than two occasions within the mem-ory of stfans, whether with different treatmnet, character types, action or don-ouncement is unimportant. Some stans are such veherent collectors that they wish to aqire every word thought or feed which might possibly be constructed as stf. They even collect books, old stuff like Wells and Verne, and the degraded stuff like ghost stories.. Some even go as far as to collect the non-fiction works of J.W. Dunne. Perhaps they think it will turn out to be stf. These collectors have no time for anything but collecting. Not even for sleep. But some go even farther. They collect books and music that could be regarded as concerned with stf, even if the orgionaters didn't so regard it. Their lot is hard, for they have no time no time to find out anything about the fields of their collection. Perhaps that is why they have not yet started to collect surrealistic art, which should just be their kettle of fish. But they will when theyhave found out how to save time by not breathing. Stfans are queer. The author of this article is a stfan, God help him.
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