The Seven Ages of Fan - Part 1

Yes, the text is apropos.

Once upon a time, O Best Beloved, the world was without form, and void. And then ghughu said the Word, and the Word was Amazing.

Actually, if the truth be told, Amazing Stories is not the beginning of SF fandom in North America – indeed, not the beginning of SF publishing: certainly, Hugo Gernsback’s addition to the pulp market in April, 1926 was apparently the first periodical specifically dedicated to “scientifiction” however stories and novels of this sort had been published in pulp format for decades already. 

Arguably, the US market for primarily literary magazines was first plumbed by Frank Munsey with his (initially weekly) magazine launched in 1889 that he modestly named after himself.[1] The Argosy was added to the news-racks in 1896.  Both these published scientific romances and fantastic tales of course, but were more general literary magazines so contained many other types of story as well.  Nevertheless, interest was sufficient by the 20^th Century to support the launch of specialized fantastic literature magazines such as Thrill Book (1919) and Weird Tales (1923). These focused more on occult and weird fiction of course, but nevertheless also contained tales that today we would class as SF.

It was in this era that the first of the many Numbered Fandoms[2] arose – the beginning that eventually evolved into an entire culture of SFandom.  This story is a long one, particularly if one starts at the beginning, so perhaps I will divide it into parts. In this part, I will lead us to the end of the First Fandom and lay the foundations of a theory of Ages that I think illuminates some of the latter history of the community.

Eofandom (1919 to 1929 – the letter era)

In the beginning was void and chaos: that is to say, scientific romances and scientifiction were scattered among a variety of magazines (and of course the occasional dime novel or penny dreadful). This is not to say there were no fans – of course there were fans! But the world of fandom was still fragmentary and of limited interaction. I think though that it’s important to note that there were nodes of interest congealing, mainly through letter writing circles such as the one that formed around H.P. Lovecraft. Likewise, interest in the science and technology of the future was intensifying in the 19-teens and 1920s: the speculations and predictions of writers such as H.G. Wells and Jules Verne appeared poised to come true, the economies of developed nations were bubbling at seemingly breakneck speed, and nearly every year was producing new, astonishing inventions that could actually be taken advantage of by ordinary people. [3]

A key feature here is that there were fairly well respected authors “dabbling” in scientific romances – names such as Washington Irving, James Ferinmore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Samuel Clemens, and Herman Melville – producing works we now see as having “literary merit” at the same time as the “dime novel” and “penny thriller” formats were beginning to boom in the late 19^th century. What the ‘Teens and ‘20s really brought was really a combination of the intensification of industrial and scientific development (truly incredible discoveries were being made after all, some of which shook thinking society right down to the foundations of understanding[4] – remember, this is the era of General Relativity, of Nikola Tesla’s inventions, of atoms and cosmic rays, of injectable insulin and penicillin – and an explosion of both economic fertility and mass production, which made for a strong middle class and plenty of spare cash for cheap luxuries like throw-away print.

The resulting explosion of pulp was a Darwinian soup in which publishers experimented with formats and combinations, bred and mutated and died. The side effect was that there was at least a whole generation raised with science fictional ideas not just inhabiting the pages of recreational reading, but occasionally appearing to become possible if not actually true. Naturally, this sudden blooming led to a growth of enthusiasm which manifested itself in the letters pages of the more persistent journals, and from there to the beginnings of correspondence directly between the fans themselves.

By all accounts, Lovecraft’s circle of correspondents (who were sometimes included as a result of fan mail from Lovecraft himself) was just one of a number of circles of this sort – a particularly interesting letter might lead other readers to write to its author to argue the matter or to add to it, and so on. Many such circles seem to have sprung up in the 1920s as the pulp magazines finally started to settle into what we might call genre lines, and two particular names seem to come up often in fan histories as having started a habit of monthly letters to professional magazines, resulting in extensive national networks of correspondents: Forrest J. Ackerman and Jack Darrow[5] being two particularly prominent names from the period.

This is what defines what we might call Eofandom – a sort of pre-fandom, fragmented community of individuals who just happen to have a similar interest and who are connecting in a haphazard way through ordinary correspondence.

The First Fandom (1929-1939 – the fanzine era)

Now, the Mists of Time obviously can’t last forever, and eventually it was inevitable that something would have to happen. It happened in the early 1930s. Or rather, two things happened.

The first thing that appears to have happened is this: the expansion of transportation options in the United States led to the ability of fans to travel to visit the people they had been corresponding with.[6] Naturally, this sort of travel would be best carried out in such a way as to meet several people at once – leading to the revelation that there were others nearby who had shared enthusiasms. As they say, if you get two Americans with a shared interest together they form a club – the networks began to coalesce into actual clubs. The second thing is a related matter: the printed fan magazine.[7]

No longer content to communicate solely via correspondence circles, and finally beginning to organize in a more formal way, fans who had access – either through financial resources of their “club” membership or by virtue of a close relationship with a printer – began to develop their own member publications.  Now, instead of poring over an ever-increasing and changing range of often genre-spanning serials to see and respond to letters, or painstakingly writing letters – sometimes with several duplicates – to be delivered directly to correspondents’ eyes alone, fans at the center of social clusters could compile the news, discussions, and arguments into a familiar form: typeset magazines such as The Time Traveller, Science Fiction Digest, Brass Tacker and others. The communities that began to coalesce around these publications are significant for what comes next.

Now, a key element of the First Fandom – and probably its seminal moment[8] - was probably the establishment of the Science Fiction League, which began life under the pen of Hugo Gernsback on the pages of the February 1934 issue of Wonder Stories.

Gernsback was of course an incredible entrepreneur of the popular science and “scientifiction” enthusiasm of the 1920s, and had launched (and mourned the death of) a number of magazines.  In this context, Gernsback was an experienced player, having established the American Radio League (which started life as the Wireless League) in 1909.  He had originally formed the organization as a means to defend the amateur radio community from oppressive legislation[9] but no doubt also realized the marketing and promotional value of this sort of organization. Beginning life with known writers and community notables such as Forrest Ackerman, Jack Darrow (that name again!), Edmond Hamilton, P. Schuyler Miller and others the organization proved popular and soon had chapters in the US, UK and Australia.

This, I believe is the defining feature of the First Fandom: this is a kind of Cambrian explosion marked by the emergence of coherent communities from the previous casual correspondence circles, and the rise of “official” fan organizations, and it is these dinosaur-like entities that feature so heavily in early fan history.

Here, however, both Speer and Katz urge the reader to see some kind of transition. Speer suggests that in the period between the sale of Wonder Stories in 1936[10] and the first Worldcon in 1939 there was a period of transition and conflict which lies between the “true” First Fandom and the Second Fandom. Katz on the other hand repudiates the idea of an interregnum and instead points to the shift in fan publications as the marker for a change in Era. I both agree and disagree with both.

I choose to use Speer’s Numbered Fandom nomenclature - along with the idea of an “interregnum” as he puts it, and I agree with Katz that publications are a useful marker for the character of the community at the time, but I think he puts too much stock in the idea of “focal point” magazines, which I think obscures some of the social complexity which is evident in the early narratives. And I’m fairly sure that social dynamics is a major part of this story, which of course gets reflected in the kind of communication fans are using.

With that, let’s go back to the idea of fan correspondence:

As you might guess, the coalescence of fans into groups and the revelation that these groups were connected to one another in a network led naturally to the desire to communicate. Typewriters had of course become much cheaper with the development of the classic Underwood #5[11] but typing and retyping the same letter multiple times – even with carbon paper[12] - was a chore that surely even the most ardent fan correspondent dreaded. But the industrial advances of the 20s had also brought about a revolution in the price of duplication devices such as hectographs and mimeographs. Mimeographs and their solvent stencil process were the superior option of course – thus their survival until quite recent times – but hectographs were cheaper and with the invention of the updated Ditto process in 1925 they could be used reliably for up to 100 copies.

Copying letters to one another is of course a fine fannish thing to do, but recall that these (mostly teenaged and early 20s) fans were building on a tradition that grew out of the egoboo that comes from seeing one’s letter between the covers of a favourite magazine: it was inevitable that basement newsrags would be born, and so the first fan circulars – true fanzines – came to be “printed”[13] to supplement the semi-pro magazines that were being printed by Conrad Ruppert and others with access to printing equipment at reasonable rates.  Some of the more active and enthusiastic fan groups developed their own publishing organs, some of which appear to have been really quite elaborate and even acquired subscribers from the British fan community. (again, a testament to the extended correspondence networks that had been building). Gradually, the cost (and effort) of producing real-live high-quality fan magazines like FM grew too much, particularly with the 1930s being a poor time to market small-run magazines of such specialized interest.  Subscription petered off and the field thinned.

Not that others failed to try to fill the void: efforts like Science Fiction World, The Planeteer and others were tried but each and every one seemed to flare and die – here the newly emerging hectograph and occasional mimeograph publications started to take up the slack. With Fantasy Magazine in particular out of the way, every fan could aspire to be an editor and see some kind of success in the hobby, but by all accounts the majority of the early hectograph efforts struggled – and failed – to achieve the kind of quality fandom had come to expect.

Still, when Morris Dollens began to send out his Science Fiction Collector publication (which was initially filled with fiction by Dollens, then expanded its scope as popularity increased) with an effort at higher production quality, if not content (which Speer reports as being spotty) a higher standard was set and the field improved.

And this is where the seeds of the end of the First Fandom are to be found – but this, perhaps, is merely the fertile soil. To understand more deeply, we need to go back in time once more.

Once upon a time,[14] in the Spring of 1928 to be precise – only 2 years after the launch of Amazing Stories – the organization that might well have been the first organized fanclub was formed: the Science Correspondence Club, which later changed its name to International Scientific Society in a letter by the founder Walter Dennis and various executives published in Astounding Stories of Super-Science[15], and later to the International Scientific Association, or ISA[16].

The ISA predated the SFL of course, but it was also an organization of a slightly different character – while Gernsback’s group was welcoming to science enthusiasts, it was after all primarily an organ aimed at promoting interest in science fiction (and indeed, the cynical might assume it was intended to promote interest in Gernsback’s magazine). ISA on the other hand was explicit in its aim to bring together the amateur science community and science fiction, with the understanding that an interest in scientifiction would naturally lead to an interest in science and ideally to a career in science.

It was this grand vision which seems to have spelled the end of the First Fandom, through the conflict that began in the latter half of the 30s, and came to a head in 1939.

As previously mentioned, the early 30s saw the rise of a dizzying number of fan societies of various levels of formality. Among the more formal clubs were organizations like ISA and SFL, and of course that hoary old chestnut The Scienceers.[17] ISA was surely the strongest of the field at the time, and as the earlier fan society it’s unsurprising to find that the first “conventions” were essentially ISA affairs – the first, of course, was not so much a convention as a picnic that somehow got out of hand and ended with a dozen or so NY-ISA members heading to Philadelphia in 1936 to meet with fans there, but the next two affairs could more reasonably be called conventions and surely led to the first Worldcon ever in 1939.

This is where things get a bit messy.

The fanzine and fan magazine realms had already seen their share of strife, from silliness like the Staple Wars[18] all the way to the conflict between Gernsback and The Planeteers over payment for the use of space at the Museum of Natural History that led to the club fracturing.

The beginnings of serious conflict began in 1934, however, with Wollheim’s accusation that Gernsback had been publishing stories from young authors in Wonder Stories and not paying them.[19]

This led to great rancour as Wollheim took to criticising Wonder in every respect in any venue to which he had access. As a stalwart member of ISA, Wollheim and his fellows-at-arms were no doubt both snide and ruthless in their criticisms, and once the truth came out that the deeper reason for hostility was Gernsback’s failure to pay battle lines began to be drawn between the ISA and the SFL.[20] It doesn’t appear that “dual citizenship” was by any means impossible, even in this era of conflict, nor is it entirely clear what effect Wollheim’s propaganda campaign against Gernsback really had, but it is true that Gernsback sold Wonder Stories in 1936

One venue in which Wollheim was able to voice his displeasure with little risk of editorially enforced moderation was the fanzine circuit. As mentioned, some of those early fanzines (by which I mean the hecto- or mimeographed publications) were of…ah…uncertain quality. However, they were produced by fans in small quantities and mailed or otherwise shared about, allowing communication to a larger audience than mere letters, and served to supplement what could reasonably be expected to reach publication in the print pro-zines.

The quality of these fanzines was increasing through the mid-30s, and as noted Dollens’ Science Fiction Collector set a high bar from its launch in 1936. Other such fanzines worked to reach a similar level, and unsurprisingly the fans who were most enthusiastically writing for and participating in the better ones were ultimately moved to form the first SFandom Amateur Printing Association, FAPA in 1937.

FAPA charged membership dues of $0.50, which entitled the 50 members to receive a packet containing copies of the other members hectographed fanzines. It is significant, I think, that the organizers of FAPA were Wollheim and John Michel, who were also at the center of the increasingly political ISA.

ISA was begun, as I have said, as an organ dedicated to bringing the amateur science folks together with the SF fans, believing that the two fed from one another and led invariably to if not careers in science but a scientific adult outlook. Given this, and given the political climate of the 1930s, it was perhaps inevitable that some members of the ISA would become political.

At the time, the economic situation in the United States was still hard and the SF pulps were foundering – the sale of Wonder was one thing, but Gernsback’s effort was by no means the only publication suffering from declining subscription. Interest in fandom was declining as well, as the first generation of enthusiastic fans grew up and moved on to whatever was needed to pay their way as adults.  There remained a core of enthusiasts of course, and increasingly there was a split in the community:

On the one side were those who had been active in the Lovecraft Circle and similar Weird Tales oriented SF – people who were science fiction fans because of the fantastic elements and the adventure. These were perhaps the scientific romanticists, more in league with the science fiction of Burroughs and Shelley and Doyle.

On the other side were those who saw scientifiction as deriving inevitably from science – they might enjoy things like Flash Gordon, but they were more interested in the speculations of Wells and Verne.  Their adventures too might be adventurous, but they expected them to be extrapolations from the amazing discoveries being announced all the time, a serious effort to see or at least inspire the future.

The ISA was, obviously, in the latter camp – but even this camp was not immune to fracture, and the break came in the summer of 1937.

Active in the hectograph scene, Wollheim and Michel (and also Fred Pohl) had also begun to get embroiled in a variety of leftist movements in the New York area, including the Young Communist League.  Wollheim, it should be said, was a relatively rapid convert – by Speer’s account he had been vocal in his support for a Republican candidate for president in the summer of 1936, but by the end of the year he was a communist. A rapid transition indeed!  These three men, along with Robert Lowndes, became vocal advocates of the cause of the future: the goal of a scientific socialist world state, which of course they argued would be a utopia.

At about the same time, another prominent member of the ISA, William Sykora, was president of the club but on the verge of going off to school and pursuing that logical aim of ISA membership: a career in science. Consumed by increasingly sober concerns, the elderly Sykora (he was, after all, in his 20s – the eldest of the players, we should remember) allowed himself to become emotional in his letter of resignation from the office of president of the NY-ISA and blasted the younger members for their obsession with friviolity and distraction from the “Gernsbackian ideal” of the advancement of science through SF fandom.

This, along with the political rift between Wollheim’s side and Sykora’s led to a series of intense battles fought out not only in the pages of fanzines and magazine letter sections, but also in person through the emerging convention scene.

So intense was the enmity after the break-down of the ISA over 1937 (leading ultimately to the formation of the Futurians from the ashes in 1938 – mainly fellow-travellers of Wollheim and Michel, at least in theory) that Wollheim, Michel and others worked to get Sykora ejected from the New York SFL[21] and led intense political campaigns that strained the atmosphere of the first real conventions in 1938 and 1939. Sykora, Sam Moskowitz, and James Taurasi[22] (together known as the Triumvirs, in opposition to Wollheim’s Quadrumvir) for their part were central to the organization of these two conventions – and advocates for serious, apolitical fandom. It was true that they felt SF (or rather stf) was a vehicle for the advancement of science, but they not only saw no need for a political agenda but actively opposed the communist utopia being pushed by the other side.

These two groups seem to have formed the hard nuclei of viciously opposed factions.  It was probably inevitable that after Wollheim read Michel’s manifesto[23] demanding that SFandom commit to the scientific socialist agenda (and assuming that any fan who thought would immediately agree that it was a brilliant goal) the two factions would clash and throw off sparks wherever they were in contact. The next year was filled with fanzine broadsides and manifestoes, mainly between Wollheim and Mozkowitz, and by the time of the first Worldcon in 1939, later dubbed Nycon, the conflict was in full boil. Sykora and Moskowitz barred Wollheim and others from the event, for fear they would make another scene by standing on soap boxes (not literally).  

This, I think, marks the dissolution of the First Fandom. Speer naturally disagrees – I suppose that is to be expected, considering his own place in the events of the era – seeing the rise and fall of the ISA (and similar organizations) as central to the nature of Fandom. Arnie Katz of course disagrees as well, seeing three Eras in the span I have labelled the First Fandom – there is a logic to this of course, as Katz is relying on the fanzine as a focal point to his eras, and because he bases his Era system on the idea of periods in which there is a consensus in fandom.

But the logic I am using is a little different:

I don’t think that a consensus is necessary to identify an era of fandom, but what is important is that the community is growing and at peace.  You’ll notice that this is the theme through my history here of my First Fandom – through Eofandom there is a blooming of the hobby, interest is growing, connections are building, and at the beginning of the First Fandom fans are coalescing into more or less formal groups. Fanzines and the like are an organ by which this is being achieved, but more than anything the technological development of cheap, accessible printing was simply a driver of the process – this along with convenient postal services and expanding transportation made it possible to make the transition from faceless letter-writing to publication circles and real life meetings.

This, then, is what I think is the central character of a Fandom: the essential nature of the community, how it grows and how it interacts, not any particular consensus.

However, there remains the question of how a Fandom ends and this again is a point at which I diverge from Katz and cleave a little more closely to Speer. The common thread in the early Fandom from both their narratives is this – that it ended, more or less, with the vicious political conflict between Wollheim et al and Moskowitz et al.  It’s significant, I think, that while many fans seem to have picked sides, the voices detectable in the publications that have survived seem a small minority of fandom as a whole. The disagreement may have been wider, but the determination to fight over it was not.

True, as Speer notes World War 2 began and surely news of the war was a dampening force. Likewise, though Katz disagrees with Speer’s assessment that the war era was a “transition” with no clear character he agrees that the war was a major focus. For that matter, I agree as well. But the question remains: why mark the end of the First Fandom (or if you like the Hectograph Era) in 1939?

I am concentrating on the relationships, on the health of the fan community and its growth. As such, I think that the most reasonable explanation for this agreement that the age must end in 1939 is this:

The Wollheim/Moskowitz feud and the intense politics that underlay it were exhausting to the run-of-the-mill fan. People were tired of the conflict. On the one hand, it must have seemed terribly frivolous to argue about the “purpose” of science fiction in the face of events across the Atlantic, and on the other hand the world was rapidly becoming a fraught enough place – those who had enough of strife would have preferred not to be bothered.  No doubt, this led to something of a withdrawal from fan society in order to avoid the constant feud.  On top of this, recall that much of fandom in this era was very young – enthusiastic teens[24] - but they were growing older, and with adulthood came other responsibilities. Even those who went on to work in science fiction as writers and publishers drifted away from the seething fan community simply because they no longer had time. In other words:

The end of this age is marked by gafiating fans.

This is the three point theory I will proceed with:

1.      A Fandom is an era of fan activity beyond simply enjoying SF – organization and society.

2.      A Fandom is marked by a period of growth and relative peace, regardless of the factions.

3.      A Fandom ends when conflict intensifies and resulting gafia causes a decline in fandom.

I will be disagreed with, but at the end of it I’m writing this history of Fandoms for myself, as a project to organize what I am presently reading, not for anyone else. Those who disagree are free to ignore me.

And with that, a warning:

It will be evident from the nature of this post that there is more to come. Not an encyclopedia, not immediately, but there is more.

---

[1] Indeed – Munsey’s Weekly, or Munsey’s Magazine as it was known after it went to a monthly format in 1891, has been claimed by some to be the first mass market magazine. This is a dubious claim, however, as the growth of mass-market periodicals in the US exploded in the 1860s, eventually producing a number of publications still known today such as Ladies Home Journal (1883).  Thus spake The Historical Dictionary of the Gilded Age (2003, Schlup & Ryan eds). Across the Atlantic, Punch was launched in 1841 – in explicit homage to similar French magazines. While some of these were niche it’s hard to see how Munsey’s could be considered the first mass-market – unless one carefully defines “mass-market” or “magazine”, or quibbles to say that it was the first such periodical launched in the magazine format. Even so… 

[2] The concept of Numbered Fandoms was first proposed in 1939 by noted fan historian, Jack Speer (yes, this one) in his amazingly complete article on the history of fandom to that point, “Up To Now” – thankfully archived online here. This idea was revised for Fancyclopedia 2 by Speer in 1946 and of course built on by others in later years, notably Robert Silverberg, who updated the history up to the Sixth Fandom in his column in the Halloween issue of Quandry in 1952. (a copy of which I don’t seem to be able to find). Arnie Katz rethinks the theory entirely in his article in Fanstuff in November 2012 – starting at issue 25, found here and concluding in issue 26, which is here. Arnie Katz reworks the Numbered Fandom approach and creates a new “Era” based framework. While his historical analysis his excellent and his article very informative (indeed, Speer and Katz form the core of my own summary) I can’t wholly agree. Speer seems to have used fanzines and the societies and politics that surrounded them as a sign of the tone and nature of fandom at the time; Katz takes fanzine clusters as being essentially definitive of fandom. I lean to the former as you will see.

[3] Presuming income of course.

[4] Seriously – see this timeline of scientific discoveries of the 20^th Century to see some of the amazing things that we learned between 1900 and 1930.

[5] These two names come up extensively in discussions of fandom from the 1930s as the number 1 and number 2 fans of the early days, but sadly only Mr. Ackerman seems to be remembered. This article bemoans the fact – and this article demonstrates it with scans of historical letters addressed to Jack Darrow (that’s his fandom pseudonym)

[6] Though it would appear that the tale of fandom essentially starting with the pilgrimage of Forrest Ackerman to the East coast is apocryphal, according to Speer in his footnote to his article added in 1994.

[7] I hesitate to call these “fanzines” as the nature seems different from the later type. A good example of high quality fan magazine from this era is Fantasy Magazine, which was started by Conrad Ruppert in September 1932 and printed on his small hand press of the typeset variety, mostly edited by Julius Schwartz. Note that this type of magazine is actually the archetype of the “semi-pro” category recognized by the Hugos and typically had quite high production standards considering the level of resources.

[8] This is where I diverge from Arnie Katz and his focus on the fanzine: I think that rather than looking to the publication as the core of the era, we should look at the dynamics of the society that was generating.

[9] Successfully, as it happens – a letter writing campaign from the membership sparked a review of the proposed legislation, and an amended version of the Alexander Wireless Bill was signed by President Taft in 1913 containing a nearly verbatim copy of the recommendations Gernsback had given in his editorial in the Feb 1912 issue of Modern Electrics, one of his magazines at the time.

[10] It suddenly seems to me that Gernsback was at the helm of a number of sinking ships. His Quixotic promotion of the latest, important thing is something to awe the reader of any history.

[11] The first mass-produced typewriter to be produced and sold in the millions.

[12] Which is only really good for 5 duplicates at a time, for the temporally challenged among us who have never used a typewriter, much less carbon paper.

[13] Multiplicated might be a more accurate word.

[14] You knew it was coming again, didn’t you?

[15] I don’t seem to be able to narrow down the date of the name changes, but from the database of issues at isfdb it appears that Dennis’s letter must have been in either June or October 1930.

[16] Inferring from Fredrik Pohl’s words in his autobiography The Way the Future Was the change to ISA seems to have occurred in 1936.

[17] The Scienceers formed in late 1929, with the first meeting on December 11 being called by some the beginning of Fandom. Ostensibly having aims similar to those of the ISA, The Scienceers were actually mainly focused on SF, which seems to have led to its fracturing a year later at the end of 1930, when Gernsback and the President Warren Fitzgerald hosted a lecture at the American Museum of Natural History. Gernsback tempted Fitzgerald and a few others into joining his rocketry club, which left The Scienceers looking for another home (they had been meeting at Fitzgerald’s apartment). Gernsback also failed to pay the fees for the Museum venue, leaving a bunch of mid-teen fans to foot the bill – not, as it happens, was it the first financial scandal the man was involved in, nor the last – thus the moniker “Hugo the Rat.”

[18] No, really.

[19] Wollheim’s story “The Man from Ariel” was apparently not paid for, and in griping Wollheim discovered that others had been similarly bilked.

[20] I find myself wondering at the coincidence of timing between the slight against Wollheim and the launch of SFL. Could it be that Gernsback saw the dispute coming? Was there more here than just predatory commercial practices and an effort to get a sustainable level of distribution for his magazine?

[21] A nasty affair involving a motion in Sykora’s absence, blocked by the president as out of order, an impeachment, and Wollheim’s “lapdog” permitting the ejection.

[22] Who, it should be noted, was also a prominent publisher of hectograph fanzines

[23] Read the thing here – you can see why many were uncomfortable with it, particularly considering the international events then in progress.

[24] Moskowitz was 19 years old when he was chair of Nycon in 1939! NINETEEN!!!

Going Round and Round with Revolution

Pohl (left) & possibly Wollheim (right) look on as Jack
Williamson (center) meets a crowd at Nycon I in 1939.
Photo from Howard DeVore as published by FANAC  

So. 

With the closing of nomination ballots coming up (March 31) yet another Hugo season is upon us.

For many fans, the next few months will also be a season of tension and rancor, as the ongoing battle between what might be called “core Worldcon fandom” and “Puppies Sad or Rabid” once again flares up into actual shots fired.[1]

On the one hand, we have the objections of people who consider themselves fans – certainly avid readers and followers of SFF by all accounts – that certain hugely popular authors seem to get passed over at the Hugos in favour of work that simply checks politically popular boxes.  The extreme version of this objection alleges secret cabals (perhaps in the service of shadowy masters deep in the land of Mordor a major publisher) who manipulate the outcome of the Hugos either by organized voting campaigns or perhaps even by directly tweaking the voting system in their favour.

On the other hand, we have the counter-objections of the loyal fen, who demure, claiming that the only shenanigans are on the part of the Puppies and their highly recommended lockstep voting reading lists…claims that at times seem to echo with a curious harmony in the naturally entirely neutral journalism of the mass media.

Frankly, I find the claims on both sides to be laughably extreme.  I have my own thoughts on the actions that led to Vox Day’s ejection from SFWA that I won’t air here [2], but the whole Puppies vs Fandom thing has evolved into a conflict of unprecedented animosity.

Or has it?

The the scale may be larger as a feature of modern technology, but the fact is that this kind of political wrangling is nothing new to Worldcon: way back in the mists of time, at the very first Worldcon in 1939, an eerily similar dispute led to a group of fans being barred from the event entirely.

Cast your mind back to the late 1930s, a world in transition:

The world was finally emerging from a crushing depression, Europe was in turmoil following the Great War and a series of socialist and other revolutions, Hitler’s Germany was on the rise, having successfully annexed both Austria and Czechoslovakia while the great powers dithered, fascism was gaining power not only there but seemingly everywhere in opposition to the socialist wave, and technology was progressing at a break-neck pace.  

Just two months after the grand opening of the New York World’s Fair in 1939, and on the edges of this tumultuous time, the very first Worldcon was held in New York – NyCon I as it was eventually called.

Now, it must be said that this wasn’t by any means the first “con” – that honour goes to what Dave Kyle called The First Eastern Science Fiction Convention [3] [4], which was held in Philadelphia in 1936.  It was also by no means a large affair, mind, being just a visit to the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society (PSFS) by members of the International Scientific Association (ISA), by reports of people who were there involving only a dozen people or fewer. [5] But this was a meeting of the early minds of American SF fandom:

•       John Michel - NY (who originated the idea of some outing for the NY chapter of the SFL in the first place)
•           Donald Wollheim - NY (who specifically suggested a visit to Philadelphia)
•           Milton Rothman – Phil (who hosted the meeting at his home and chaired the meeting)
•           Fred Pohl – NY (who served as secretary)
•           Dave Kyle - NY
•           William Sykora – NY
•           Herbert Goudket – NY (who was behind the camera for the apocryphal photo)
•           Robert Madle – Phil
•           Ossie Train - Phil
•           And some fellow named Hahn [6] along with, presumably, others to bring the total to about 12.

This is not a mere digression, however, since I suspect the seeds of revolution were planted on that fateful October 22 in 1936.

The key factor here is probably Sykora, who was an enormous fan from the beginning.  He wasn’t just a charter subscriber to Amazing Stories when the eponymous Hugo Gernsback launched it in 1926 but also a core member of a number of early science and SF associations, such as The Scienceers [7], the SFL (GNY branch), the International Cosmos Science Club, and the ISA.  An association of note that Sykora was most emphatically not a member of was the Futurian Society.  And so begins our real story.

 The Futurians numbered quite a few names that are well known in modern Fandom: people like Isaac Asimov, James Blish and his future wife Virginia Kidd, Damon Knight, Judith Merril – and some of the GNY-SFL members who traveled to Philadelphia: John Michel, Fred Pohl, Dave Kyle and Donald Wollheim.

Now, the New York Futurians [8] were remarkably influential, considering that they never really numbered very many, were never  and only lasted about seven years. But they /were/ intense, and differed from the more “ordinary” Gernsbackian SFandom, which insisted that fans and SF authors should ideally strive for the advancement of science – specifically, the Futurians were progressives of the time – Bohemian, anarchistic in organization, prone to free verse in poetry and decadence in literature and art.  They were sympathetic to the anarchist and communist efforts against fascist Franco in Spain (and other Fascists), and themselves defined a Futurian as one who:

“thru SF rise to vision a greater world, a greater future for the whole of mankind, and wishes to utilize his idealistic convictions for aid in a generally cooperative and diverse movement for the betterment of the world along democratic, impersonal, and unselfish lines.” [9]

Though Futurian thought was often referred to as Wollheimianism the idea really originated with John Michel in 1937:

At the 1937 Third Eastern Science Fiction Convention in Philadelphia, Donald Wollheim read a speech penned by Michel entitled “Mutation or Death!” [10] which denounced “the Gernsbackian delusion” of science alone as the way forward: Michel in this speech denounced Mussolini and other fascists, denounced what people might call today “the military industrial complex”, and declared the solidarity of SFandom with “the heroic defenders of Madrid and Shanghai.” – his declaration that SFandom was obligated to join forces to work toward a future utopian world state was taken by many to refer to communism (probably a justified assumption given the congruence between his rhetoric and that of Bolshevik revolutionaries of the era, not to mention Michel’s involvement in the Young Communist League)

This began a(nother) rather rancorous cycle of feuding in US fandom, with Michel and certain other Futurians (notably Donald Wollheim and Fred Pohl) growing increasingly political, which rubbed rather a lot of fandom the wrong way, including solid “Gernsbackian” science first fans such as Sam Moskowitz and William Sykora, the latter being a particular bugbear for the Michelian Futurists for reasons I really don’t understand – I presume simply because he was one of those who most bluntly told the kids to settle down. [11]

Things really came to a head, though, in 1939, at the time of the first official Worldcon, later dubbed Nycon by the inimitable Forrest Ackerman: this convention, being held under the auspices of the New York fandom, was chaired by Futurian nemesis Sam Moskowitz along with two others well hated by the utopians: William Sykora and James Taurasi.

These three men not only disapproved of the injection of politics into SFandom by the Futurians, but were keenly aware of the opinion of other fan organizations and more importantly the fact that the convention was likely to be fairly high profile owing to the fact that the Worlds Fair then going on in New York was themed “The World of Tomorrow” – how could the first ever major science fiction convention /not/ attract attention?  How would it look if brash, outspoken young men and women seemed to be talking (socialist) revolution?

As a result, the Triumvirate (as they were to be called) made a decision later known to fannish historians as “The Great Exclusion Act” to ban Michel, Wollheim, Pohl and others from attending, on account of rumours that they intended to issue yet another manifesto during the proceedings, whether approved or not – a concern that was based on past disruption at the smaller Newark convention in 1938[12] and the discovery of a pamphlet [13] that was written and distributed by fellow Futurian Dave Kyle and others [14].

So.

A dispute in fandom over what SF should be and what it should achieve.  A dispute over what the tone and obligations of fandom should be like.  A dispute, even, over what precisely defines rightfan and wrongfan thinking.

How does that quote go?  Ah yes:

 “History doesn’t always repeat itself.  Sometimes it just screams, 'Why don’t you listen to me?' and lets fly with a big stick.” – John W. Campbell Jr.

--30--

1. Metaphorically actual, obviously.

2. No, really.  I think there’s plenty of blame to go around, and while I don’t think I’d enjoy having a drink with the man he’s also been treated to what appears to be an unfair drubbing in the mass media.

3. But which the attendees officially dubbed the Philadelphia Science Fiction Convention in reference to the fact that both the Republican and Democratic national conventions had been held there earlier in the year.

4. And in fact, there’s even some dispute as to whether this was the first: it was a meeting, certainly, and they took the name “convention” for the business meeting, but it may be that the event held by the UK’s LeedsScience Fiction League in January 1937 was the first true “con”.

5. Though John Michel’s account in a fanzine later that year reputedly claims there were only 9 attendees (and he refers to a photo – though I haven’t been able to locate one) Dave Kyle – who was also there – says there were “barely a dozen” in his own recollection of the event .  I like to think of the attendance as being 10±2 with one of the minimal 9 – Herbert Goudket - being a kind of “Schroedinger’s Fan” as he was supposedly there, but not shown in the photo because he was behind the camera.

6. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen Hahn’s given name…er…given, and as a result every time I see or write the name I have the irrepressible image of James Tiberius Kirk expressing his outrage at being outwitted by his ancient nemesis. I feel certain the gentleman in no way resembled Ricardo Montalban, however.

7. Possibly the first SF fanclub ever!

8. Not affiliated with other groups calling themselves Futurians, though the Left Coast group in LA with the same name did apparently move en masse to the Right Coast to join up with them…just in time for the society to collapse as a result of the lawsuit filed by Wollheim in response to “The X Document” – a one shot publication that detailed an internicene conflict among the Futurians of New York.

9. Thus saith Fancyclopedia 2.

10. Full text of Michel's manifesto "Mutation or Death" is available here: 

11. It should be remembered that many of the players in this drama were younger than Michel, who at the time of Nycon 1 in 1939 was only 22 – some of them were still in their teens throughout this controversy!

12. This convention was marred by accusations of high-handed and dictatorial action by the organizers, and various sniping among political factions in fandom…sound familiar?

13. The full text of the famous Yellow Pamphlet is here. 

14. Who, strangely, despite being the nucleus of the decision to Exclude, was allowed to remain.  All reference to this seems to agree that he was allowed to stay because he was already in the hall…and yet, it appears that some others who were distributing the pamphlet, including Robert Lowndes, Cyril Kornbluth and Jack Gillespie were ejected. I’m at a loss as to what the difference was, unless it was simply that Kyle was physically inside the hall at the time the decision was made, while the others were distributing pamphlets outside.

The messy death of WSFS Inc

Early in 2016, a number of mystery photos clearly of the 14th World Science Fiction Convention (NyCon II) held in 1956 were posted to Flickr with a call for fandom to step up and help identify those pictured - as I posted here, quite a few of the faces have already been identified.

As I was going through those photos and picking out the people who had been identified for my collation post, I recalled the two scandals which were at the root of the death of the World Science Fiction Society (WSFS), Inc, one of which I mentioned in passing the other day.

I should hasten to say that I wasn't there (indeed, wasn't anywhere as far as I know in the 1950s, which was roughly when my parents were preparing for their O-levels) and nor am I particularly involved with Worldcon matters beyond lining the Hugo committee's pockets with silver for the privilege of voting, so much of this is hearsay or gleaned from a variety of online and print sources over the years, but for the benefit of those not initiated I thought I'd summarize what seems to have happened here - I think this is topical for Worldcon matters right now because the ill-feelings that arose from this case caused acrimony in fandom that lasted 50 years and I often wonder if the memory of some of the things that some have speculated lie beneath the acrimony might be playing into the hostility between certain factions today.

And so, the tale:

WSFS, Inc.

Our story begins with the ill-fated establishment of WSFS, Inc., a name that still causes furrowed brows in some quarters.

WSFS, Inc. as an entity actually began at Philcon II in 1953.  Up until that point, the convention organizing committee was very much a grassroots, cooperative fan affair and there was some talk about the risk to individual fans in the event of cash shortfalls - the incorporation of an entity to handle business matters was intended to make things "safer" in that a corporation could declare bankruptcy.  As things had previously been organized, individual fans could theoretically be sued for shortfalls in the event the con ran out of money to pay service providers, and of course as always the average participating fan wasn't so wealthy that this sort of risk was insubstantial.  For context, there was a movement at the time to try to build conventions up, and larger conventions would mean higher costs - a shortfall of just a few percent could leave the organizing fans with a sizable private debt to pay, so going forward the financial risk was very real.  After several years of establishment and growth in support, WSFS, Inc. was actually voted into authority over the whole Worldcon deal at NyCon II in 1956 - the very con from which these new photos come from!

Now, despite the promises made by the whole incorporation movement, history tells us that in fact the two largest Worldcons that were organized under the WFSF, Inc. banner - NyCon II in 1956 and LonCon in 1957 - both ran in the red, with no involvement from WFSF, Inc. to "protect" the organizing fans. Which brings us to...

NyCon II

NyCon II was a big affair for WFSF, Inc. in that this was the con at which the corporation was voted into authority as the enduring entity of SF fandom as originally promised in the years since 1953. That said, the matter was by no means without question - in fact, society bigwig George Raybin reportedly "threatened" that if the ordinary business meeting (where all attendees could vote) failed to pass the motion then the Society would get together a group of pro voting con-committee members who would do it anyway.  Fannish community being what it is, this was naturally resented and given that one of the main features of having such an entity at the heart of Worldcon affairs - the financial security - didn't even materialize when NyCon II went into the red and couldn't reimburse certain organizers (notably Frank Dietz (pictured!), Belle Dietz, and George Raybin) who went out of pocket it's unsurprising that ill-will was generated.  Indeed, this is one of the events that planted the seeds of the accusation of empire building that still plague Worldcon fandom today.

But wait!  The scandal isn't finished yet!

The Plane Trip

Now, NyCon II was chaired by David Kyle [1] (also pictured!) - this will become relevant shortly, however for the time being perhaps the most relevant dimension is that he stepped forward to assist in organizing the USAian contingent's travel to LonCon in 1957.  In order to facilitate travel, the idea was that a plane would be chartered, and Dave Kyle volunteered to organize it.  In the process, it became clear that the airline wouldn't accept the risk of chartering to an individual on the promise of future payments by other individuals, so to handle the issue Dave presented himself as "President, London Trip Fund, of the WSFS Inc." and this is where things started to get complicated.

Other members of WSFS - mainly the Dietzes and George Raybin were concerned that this put WSFS, Inc. in the position of being legally responsible, so they insisted on coming in on a committee with Dave Kyle to oversee the fund, though in practice Dave apparently continued to do all the main work along with Ruth Landis (then serving as secretary of the Fund).

Further complication arose when the LonCon organizers sought a list of those who had paid at least in part for the trip to the 1957 convention in the UK, and recieved no reply from Ruth Landis.  This led to them contacting other members of the committee, who extracted a partial list from Ruth in what Dave Kyle would later characterize as "an infamous inquisition" - and the inter-personal tensions raised over these events further led to them insisting that Raybin be listed as co-signer for the bank account at which the funds were being held - "in case of emergency"

Frictions increased, but the trip went ahead - though in the end there was also bad feeling because of the number of non-con-goers who ended up on the flight...and also because, as the LonCon trip was also serving as Ruth and Dave's honeymoon, there was a movement to gift them the $5 deposits (which had been supposed to be refunded) each passenger gave to secure seats on the flight as a wedding present.  No doubt the number of travellers who left the con early and stiffed the organization for the cost of their guaranteed hotel bookings was no small part of the acrimony either.

And so, we come to:

The Lawsuit

In the end, NyCon II was in the red, with some committee members out of pocket to cover costs - LonCon was in the red as well - and between inter-personal issues and friction over funds surrounding the Plane Trip tempers were high.  In the end, Frank and Belle Dietz and George Raybin demanded to be reimbursed by Dave Kyle for about $100 in unpaid costs from their time working at the 1956 NyCon II (Frank, who was known for making audio recordings of various fandom events, was Recorder-Historian, Belle had been Secretary, and Raybin was Legal Officer that year).  Kyle refused, so the three filed suit and attached his bank account as penalty.

Kyle was, to say the least, annoyed.  He filed counter suit for $25,000, claiming damage to his reputation.  The three were undeterred, however, and counter-counter sued for the same amount.  Harsh words went into print on both sides,   Kyle upped the ante to $35,000.

The thing dragged on, and at last fandom had had enough of it - some did in fact come in on the side of the WSFS and the Dietzes, but the Falascas (also pictured!) brought the legality of the WSFS Inc entity into question and general disgust over both the general offense of bringing legal action into it [2] and the scale the dispute had reached - the sums being claimed were at that time enormous, and likely to put an average fan in debt for many years.

The Death of WSFS, Inc.

The lawsuit contenders were in a bind - there wasn't a way to get out of the situation that wouldn't make everyone look awful.  The Falascas [3] and another group known as the Berkeley Bhoys [4] put on the pressure by linking the fracas to the whole idea of WSFS, Inc. and in the end the situation came to a head in the context of the 1958 SoLaCon - anti WSFS, Inc. sentiment was running so high that the con committee announced via the Chair Anna Moffatt that they would not be associating SoLaCon with the WSFS at all - indeed, at the business meeting where the announcement was made, it was reportedly greeted with cheers.

Now, since SoLaCon wasn't in fact associated with WSFS as a result of this, they couldn't table any motions directly impacting the organization themselves, but the result was a motion that the directors be called to dissolve WSFS, Inc.  According to the Fancyclopedia 3 article on the matter, as of 1959 it was unclear what exactly this meant but it's obvious that WSFS, Inc. was no longer a viable organ at that time, as even then there was comment that it was unlikely to ever again play a significant role in fandom.

And indeed, WSFS, Inc. as an extant "thing" was largely gone six months later.

So what now?

Well, the WSFS itself is obviously alive and well - the corporate organ that was created in the 50s is long gone, and in fact the very idea of such an entity to handle WSFS affairs seems to be a prickly one in fandom - I think this is illustrated by Kevin Standlee's comment in his explanation of the Mark Protection Commitee:

Who owns WSFS's intellectual property? Specifically, who owns the service marks (similar to trademarks) on "Worldcon," "Hugo Award," and so forth. WSFS saw the need to obtain protection for its marks in the 1980s, and had they not done so, anyone could set up their own "Worldcon" or "Hugo Awards." (Sometimes it seems like people are doing just that, but I'm getting ahead of the story.) But who would register and own the marks? Although individual Worldcons are generally run by corporate entities (usually non-profit corporations or their equivalents outside the USA), you couldn't have an individual Worldcon register the marks, because they only have the right to use those marks for a limited period of time covering their own Worldcon. And if you let any particular Worldcon-running non-profit own the marks, you've effectively made the WSFS Inc. by stealth. [5]

So - there is no WSFS, Inc. What happened in the fallout of the WSFS, Inc. fiasco was that SoLaCon operated unassociated, and the next Worldcon location - Detention, held in Detroit - was voted on by attendees to that convention.  As such, that convention was unassociated as well.

And to this day, the mantle of "Worldcon" and membership in WSFS passes from con to con every year, thus the complex web of relationships and ad hoc committees that rely so much on the constant core of the WSFS community.  But I dare say the tremors are still felt when the old-timers talk about certain topics.

--30--

1. Interestingly, Kyle was also one of the infamous New York Futurians, who were essentially sympathetic to communist efforts in Spain and intensely anti-Nazi...and who were at the center of some other scandals, including the various Exclusion Acts, which of course is another matter of scandal and long-standing fan feud.  I find this curious considering that Kyle is also the one who tried to prevent the Balcony Insurgents from listening to the guest of honor banquet speeches because they hadn't paid the $7 banquet fee - an odd position for someone who may have been a Bolshevist at the time.

2. People questioned whether "mundanes" could even understand the esoteric world of fandom well enough to render a fair judgement, not to mention the general ungentlemanly tone of such an approach.

3. The Falascas expressed their displeasure in detail in their three issue fanzine Fandom's Burden

4. The fan community of the Bay area, specifically those individuals most involved in producing the FANAC fanzine: Terry Carr, Ron Ellik (pictured!), Carl Brandon, Dave Rike, and Peter Graham are the usual names mentioned.

5. The whole article is here for those interested in the details of Worldcon matters: http://kevin-standlee.livejournal.com/351874.html