NUMERICAL FANDOMS

from Fancyclopedia 2

Aside from mere chronological information, study of the history of fandom seems to show trends dominating the whole field at different times. (One of the most obvious is the relative amount of emphasis given by fanzines to the proz, to other fanzines, and to aspects of fandom having nothing to do with fantasy.) Early speculations included comparisons with various stages of Macrocosmic Occidental history (with special reference to the Dark Ages), but Jack Speer developed the most popular and flexible theory by application of Spenglerian principles of cyclic history. In the first Fancyclopedia (1944) he distinguished three fandoms -- periods of distinct and marked characteristics -- separated by two transitions in which characteristics of preceding and succeeding fandoms were mingled. Later Bob Silverberg distinguished three more following these (in QUANDRY, Oct. 1952), and drew attention to the parallel with the varieties of mankind in Stapledon's Last and First Men. He predicted the rise of a Seventh Fandom following these, with results described below.

Eofandom, from about 1930 to 1933, existed before fandom became an entity; generally comprised of folk with no sense of group existence whose interests were in collecting stf and scientificomics, and who eagerly hunted down any items with any sort of stfnal significance. Such fanzines as Science Fiction Digest and The Comet were the mags of the day. Primitive trilobites crawled about on the ocean floor. Letter-writing was a major activity, and stfnists depended on hcs of the past as much as, or more than, prozines for sustenance.

First Fandom, 1933-1936, was marked mainly by interest in science and science-fiction, with fanzines consisting mostly of forecasts of lineups in the proz, interviews with prominent authors, fan fiction [def. (1)], sometimes novelty fiction by pros, science snippets, and other depressing things. Fantasy magazine was the dominant fan publication thruout this period.

First Transition ran from the decline of Fantasy Magazine in late 1936 to the Third Convention. It was marked by a shift of interest away from the pro field (then in recession) to the fans themselves. There was consequently more fan news in the fanzines; more fanzines; and talk about things having little relation to SF but interesting to the fans. The International Scientific Assn. (ISA was the leading organization during its life.

Second Fandom, October 1937 to October 1938, when the Quadrumvirs resigned office in FAPA. Out of the increasing interest in fandom came Michelism, and political discussions were most noticeable tho many other things not related to fantasy were booted about. Fan feuds reached the proportions of fan wars, mainly between the Wollheimists and their enemies, climaxing with the Newark Convention and the FAPA campaign (May-June 1938).

Second Transition, from the 1938 Philadelphia Conference to the ChiCon I. It was marked by the Barbarian Invasion, the ascendancy of New Fandom, and the consequent switch of emphasis heavily back toward professional science fiction tho there was still lots of discussion of other things.

Third fandom, from September 1940 to late 1944 when many of the older fen had been drafted. Warring factions healed their differences or were less in evidence; the underlying fraternity of stfnists was prominent, and a balance was struck between stf and other things that fans were interested in. A general fan organization was much desired, but that which was established as the N3F ran into difficulties as war came to America. There was much talk of fandom "maturing"; the Brain Trust was dominant in FAPA; serious thoughtful discussions of everything under the sun were offered; and at the same time there was a flood of digests and indexes and bibliographies of this that and t'other, regarded as a summation and consolidation of past achievements in fandom. Harry Warner's SPACEWAYS, with its intellectuality and deemphasis of feuding, was the dominant fanzine of the period.

Third Transition, setting in about the time Speer's Fancyclopedia climaxed the last trend of US Third Fandom noted above, and continuing to the failure of Operation Futurian in 1946. A thinning of the blood in the Brain Trust ("a poetic way of saying they gave priority to other claims on their time"), accumulation of deadwood, and missingness of many older fans in the Armed Forces brought on arteriosclerosis of the Golden Age; but shortly thereafter the rise of new fans, and the return of the early releases from the Armed Forces, with the reunion-cons like the FPWESFC led to a revival. Chief fan event of this period was the extinction of the Futurians in the power struggles beginning with VAPA and the Little Interregnum and climaxing in the X Document fight.

Fourth Fandom: 1946 to mid-1947. The boom in stf publishing (1941-43) had been put down by the war, and five of the eight survivors (Weird, Amz, FA, ASF, FFM) ignored fandom, which led to a congregation of communicating fans in the lettercolumns of the Standard Twins and Planet Stories. Ill-feeling against Ziff-Davis and Palmer over the Shaver Mystery led to a general declaration of feud against RAP which did not, however, come to a head till the next stage in our history. Keynote fans of Fourth Fandom were letterhacks , who mostly dropped by the wayside tho Chad Oliver went on from here to prodom. Their symbol and representative was Sergeant Saturn. In the early part of this period lack of proz led to a trend toward book collecting; a revival of prozines in its latter half produced a small Barbarian Invasion phenomenon. And the raucous cries of the Hucksters were heard everywhere.

Fifth Fandom: from the 1947 PhilCon I to just before the Korean War, 1951. Though short-lived Fifth Fandom left a sharper impress on history than the Fourth. It was a period of escape from the juvenile aspects of Fourth Fandom; Art Rapp's SPACEWARP summed up the essence of the era, which its lifetime spanned. As after the first Barbarian Invasion, fans began to notice the prozines once more -- and vice versa with the establishment of Rog Phillips' Club House column in Amazing. As Sarge Saturn was the pro sounding board for Fourth Fandom, RPG was that of the Fifth. The pure-stefnistic opposition to the Hucksters passed into the Insurgent Movement; one of its symptoms was Ah! Sweet Idiocy! Others such as the Shaver War (which ended during this period with the ejection of the Mystery from Amaziff and resignation of Palmer from his editorship), the uproar over the Miss Science Fiction promotion at the CinVention , and the soulsearching about the Literary Value of Science Fiction which led to a session of Bradbury worship were also aspects of the struggle against commercialism.

Fifth Transition, 1950-1951, saw a diffusion of interests in fandom, with a wartime boom in stf coinciding with Campbell's amazing advocacy of crackpottery like Dianetics while the gafiation of opposition leaders like Rapp and the Insurgents left Tucker's Bloomington News Letter briefly the top fanzine. The rise of Quandry ended this period.

Sixth Fandom: 1951-53. It began as a real force in Room 770 at the NOLaCon. At least, tho not actually born there (for correspondence and the letter-columns of Q and Fanvariety had clearly given the impetus some months before the NOLaCon), its first central meeting may be said to have been there. Contrasting to Fourth Fandom, Sixth Fandom existed at a time when there was too much science fiction -- twelve to eighteen proz a month, several hc specialist houses, and many stf books appearing in pb form. The cleavage between the trufans on the one hand, and the pros and their satellites on the other, was evident, reflecting in such things as the Big Convention movement, the opposing move to small informal gatherings like the MidWestCon, and, later, Serious Constructive Insurgentism. The size of Sixth Fandom led to an assortment of trends of which the split mentioned was only the most notable, but it is generally held to have centered around Lee Hoffman's Quandry and to have followed Pogo as its fictional hero. Big names were people like Hoffwoman, Shelby Vick, Walt Willis, and Max Keasler, tho veterans of previous fandoms like Tucker, Silverberg, Warner, and Boggs were influential. It was alleged that it folded with the gafiation of Keasler, Vick, and Leeh (especially) and the corresponding lapse of their fanzines.

Sixth Transition. The major phenomenon of the Sixth Transition was 7th Fandom, self-so-called. This was organized at the HECon (at Harlan Ellison's apartment, May 1953) shortly after the black-bordered Quandry announcing Leeh's gafiation arrived. A group of neofans, mostly youngsters, there began a formally organized campaign to begin "Seventh Fandom", whose arrival Silverberg had earlier predicted. (They did not understand that historical eras do not begin by somebody's arbitrary decision.) Old fans refused to lay down and die, but 7th Fandom ("the phoney Seventh") was an important influence during its day in that the war against these "noisy juveniles" marked the end of the old Sixth Fandom. Some fans, poking fun, proclaimed the rise of 8th, 69th, and 200th Fandom on the ruins of 7th; others withdrew into the APAs, which became the main carriers of fannish tradition while the barbarians howled outside.

Seventh Fandom: 1954-???? Seventh Fandom (the Era) arose after the downputting of 7th Fandom (the Movement) amid general indignation after the shoddy exhibitions at the MidWestCon and SFCon in 1954. It led to renewed interest in fandom as fandom, exemplified in such publications as The Enchanted Duplicator and also in later phenomena like the attempts to start a regular fan monthly as a "rallying point" and the rise of weekly and biweekly fan magazines of the letter substitute (news-and-chatter) type, more fannish than the older formal newszines. Re-emphasis on fandom brought a clash with the commercializing element which showed up in dissatisfaction with the NYCon II and a violent fan feud over the definition of a "real" fan. These clashes and the disgraceful fight over WSFS' plane trip may be phenomena of Seventh Fandom or symptoms of a transition which cannot be distinguished at this point in history. It seems that a diversion of interests is the keynote of Seventh Fandom, as a diffusion of trends was of the Sixth.

If it existed, Eighth Fandom's keynote was probably widespread confusion, and after that fandoms ceased to be numbered. This may be because no fanhistorian has applied sufficient effort to the task of sorting out the trends of 1954 to the present, or it may merely prove that fans cannot count higher than eight.