Science Fiction History You Can Sink Your Teeth Into
26. Sep, 2009 
6 Comments
Via TLTSNBN and a fan who will not be named here either unless I get permission to do so (a fan who another unnamed participant in the list recommends for a Greatest For Life Award, and I heartily agree) has found what is perhaps the greatest write up of fifties fandom ever published in a mundane publication. Life magazine to be precise.
Others are busily checking the fan archives, going over the facts, mentioning a few possible errors, but I can tell you that despite whatever flaws this document posesses, it is not only a hoot, but is also a very telling commentary on the state of fandom and science fiction today.
I’m still reading it, but have already found some bon mots:
The piece appears in the May 21st, 1951 issue of Life (Life was a weekly back then). The author, Winthrop Sargeant, places the number of hardcore fans at about 20,000 and science fiction readership in general at approximately 2 millions.
The US population in 1951 was about 158 million. Today it’s about 305 million, or just under twice what it was about half a century ago. If we take the unscientific method of doubling things, it means that hardcore fen number about 40,000 and readers 4 millions. I suspect that the growth of fandom is exponential though, which would make the real potential numbers enormous.
Sargeant uses the term STF (stef), along with many other words of fannish slang, but I find it interesting that he uses STF and Scientifiction most often.
He talks about the magazines in the field giving Westerns and Romances a run for their money, mentioning that there are some 25 SF magazines in publication.
He defines space opera the way that I define it – “…one descends to the type of cosmic romance known to the trade as “space opera,” which differs from the old-fashioned western merely in the fact that its heroes ride rocket ships instead of palominos and carry paraguns (shooting paralysis-dealing rays) instead of six guns.”
He presages the “turd in the punchbowl” conundrum with this: “Since it tries to keep ahead of science, which regularly becomes dated, science fiction inevitably suffers from a high rate of obsolescence.”
He offers this as a description of the influence SF is having over the publishing world: “The omnivorous appetite of this public for its chosen form of literature, has made it, at the moment, one of the most spectacularly booming departments of the publishing business.” Quite different from today.
I’m blown away by this piece. Like I said, I’m still reading, and I think you all ought to be also. So here’s the link, and you can thank one of the many SMOFs over at TLTSSBN.
PLEASE SUBSCRIBE TO MY FEED
Oh, I was going to blog about this, but if all the other kids are doing it, and I don’t know what they’re getting right or wrong, it takes all the fun out of it.
What, pray tell, does anyone need to check “the fan archives” about?
I don’t know either, but I encourage the impulse. If members of the clubs that published Warner’s books actually read them they stop doing things like trying to demote Ackerman’s Hugo to a committee award.
I made some comments here.
“Via TLTSNBN and a fan who will not be named here either unless I get permission to do so…”
If you mean me, I don’t mind at all being named here!
Well yes Bill, I did mean you. Thanks for unearthing that piece. Of course, now you have been outed as one of the hidden puppet masters of fandom – which probably indicates that there is some major skullduggery afoot, as we all know that HPMOFs never do anything without first consulting Phil Farmer’s Handy Guide To Conspiracy Making, particularly the chapter entitled “How To Hide Your Real Intent By Giving Up Seemingly Important But Actually Irrelevant Information”.