SLANfrom Fancyclopedia 2
(vanVogt) Superman produced by mutation from humans; the word is sometimes
used to mean any superhuman mutants, but in the story they were the children
of Samuel Lann and their descendants. These folk had "tendrils" in the hair
that gave the power of telepathy, with greater than human intelligence,
strength, and endurance as a byproduct of their real advance: a nervous
system of transcendent resilience and complexity, adapted to the demands of
mechanistic civilization. Because the central character in the story was a
youth in unsympathetic surroundings, and because of the obvious similarities
to fans' dreams of greatness, the unserious claim to slanhood became the
Third Fandom parallel to
Second Fandom's half-serious
star-begotten claims.
| 
