SLAN SHACK

from Fancyclopedia 2

An ancient dream of fans (well, dating back to 1938, at least). The idea is to have a place where fans live together, sharing expenses and bumming off one another, and where they can decorate the walls and halls appropriately and scatter their collections all around. The first realization of this dream was the Flat, in London. It was soon followed by Futurian House and a long line of successors. In 1943 appeared Slan Shack itself, which gave its name to the idea (previously called by the more formal name of science-fiction house). Here dwelt the Ashleys, Liebscher, and Weidenbeck, and later EE Evans; they moved en masse from the original Slan Shack in Battle Creek to another site on Bixel Street, Los Angeles, cheek by jowl with the LASFS clubroom. (It was the ground floor of a duplex next door. Its upper floor, "Slan Shack Annex", was rented occasionally to struggling fen and pros.) The place didn't break up till the building was torn down in March '48 to make room for an office building. Outgrowth of this was the idea of Slan Center, which Ashley conceived in early '43 as a whole block of slanshacks (to be built on the outskirts of LA) with central clubroom and publishing plant. Nothing came of this last notion.

These establishments are more or less natural developments from the fraternity and nationalism of fandom, coupled with the rise of the average fan's age to self-supporting and home-leaving time. Up to half a dozen of them have existed at one time, such as Tendril Towers (Jacobs & Cox, in LA), The Ivory Birdbath (Youngs & Stark, in Cambridge), Granny's House (Kerkhof and others, in DC) and several others mentioned in other parts of this volume.