AH! SWEET IDIOCY!

from Fancyclopedia 2

F Towner Laney read fandom the riot act in this mammoth publication, 130 pages explaining his disgust with fandom, its inhabitants, its attitudes, its interests, and any other group characteristics you can think of. It was the culmination of his attacks on the more undesirable features of the LASFS in particular, which had previously been blasted in a series in the club organ SHANGRI-L'AFFAIRES. The title represents his view of fandom from the outside, as seen by a non-fan; it was, in a way, Laney's fan memoirs, and described his entire fan career to 1946 and the Pacificon -- during which time he went from looking at fans thru rose-colored glasses to looking at them without, perhaps, any glasses at all. This growing disillusionment is the whole point of the work, in which Laney explains how and why he became an Insurgent.

ASI immediately provoked discussion and argument pro and con from all over; some disputed the facts and some the propriety of describing fandom in general and the LASFS in detail as a nest of ineffectuals, perverts, fuggheads and worthless creatures generally. But the almost universal acceptance of the Insurgent Attitude and its later equivalent, the Trufan idea, among the top fans, suggests that FTL had an uncomfortable amount of the right on his side.