MAILING COMMENTS

from Fancyclopedia 2

are comments -- i e short notes as distinguished from formal review or criticism -- on the contents of a previous mailing of an APA and published in a later mailing (rather than, say, mailed direct to the members concerned). Reviewing a mailing in a magazine postmailed to the same mailing is frowned upon.

Jack Speer began this custom in the Third FAPA Mailing and mighty was the success thereof. A few of the unenlightened who maintain that comments on comments are too much like diminishing spirals for their taste have been adequately dealt with by Vernon McCain, who remarked that if they never commented on comments it must be pretty difficult to carry on a conversation with them.

Since, from their nature, all the intended audience may be assumed to know what they're about, MCs can easily become a very inner-circle feature of an APA, and commentzines or -sections may often make the short descent to mere collections of notes. Mailing comments were the feature that led Sam Merwin to describe SAPS as a system of interlocking mailboxes.