Science fiction fandom
In New York City, David Lasser, Gernsback's managing editor, nurtured the birth of a small local club called the Scienceers, which held its first meeting in a Harlem apartment on 11 December 1929.
[2] Around this time, a few other small local groups began to spring up in metropolitan areas around the United States, many of them connecting with fellow enthusiasts via the Science Correspondence Club.
[3] In January 1932, the New York City circle, which by then included future comic-book editors Julius Schwartz and Mort Weisinger, brought out the first issue of their own publication, The Time Traveller, with Forrest J Ackerman of the embryonic Los Angeles group as a contributing editor.
In 1934, Gernsback established a correspondence club for fans called the Science Fiction League, the first fannish organization.
A widely regarded (though by no means error-free) history of fandom in the 1930s can be found in Sam Moskowitz's The Immortal Storm: A History of Science Fiction Fandom (Hyperion Press, 1988, ISBN 0-88355-131-4; original edition The Atlanta Science Fiction Organization Press, Atlanta, Georgia 1954).
The beginning of an Italian science fiction fandom can be located between the late 1950s and early 1960s, when magazines such as Oltre il Cielo and Futuro started to publish readers’ letters and promote correspondences and the setting-up of clubs in various cities.
[8] Among the first fanzines, Futuria Fantasia was cyclostyled in Milan in 1963 by Luigi Cozzi (later to become a filmmaker), its title paid homage to Ray Bradbury's fanzine by the same name; L’Aspidistra, edited by Riccardo Leveghi in Trento starting in 1965 featured contributions by Gianfranco de Turris, Gian Luigi Staffilano, and Sebastiano Fusco, future editors of professional magazines and book series; also Luigi Naviglio, editor in 1965 of the fanzine Nuovi Orizzonti, was soon to become a writer for I Romanzi del Cosmo.
During subsequent years fanzines continued to function as training grounds for future editors and writers, and the general trend was towards improved quality and life expectancy (e.g.
[8] In 1963, the first Trieste Festival of Science Fiction Cinema took place, anticipating the first conventions as an opportunity for a nationwide social gathering.
SF writer Cory Doctorow calls science fiction "perhaps the most social of all literary genres", and states, "Science fiction is driven by organized fandom, volunteers who put on hundreds of literary conventions in every corner of the globe, every weekend of the year.
Commercial shows dealing with SF-related fields are sometimes billed as 'science fiction conventions,' but are operated as for-profit ventures, with an orientation towards passive spectators, rather than involved fans, and a tendency to neglect or ignore written SF in favor of television, film, comics, video games, etc.
Other SF Societies maintain a more informal existence, meeting at general public facilities or the homes of individual members, such as the Bay Area Science Fiction Association.
Some groups exist almost entirely within fandom but are distinct and cohesive subcultures in their own rights, such as filkers, costumers, and convention runners (sometimes called "SMOFs").
For example, Finland's national gathering Finncon is funded by the government, while all conventions and fan activities in Japan are heavily influenced by anime and manga.
Fanspeak is made up of acronyms, blended words, obscure in-jokes, and standard terms used in specific ways.
Some terms used in fanspeak have spread to members of the Society for Creative Anachronism ("Scadians"), Renaissance Fair participants ("Rennies"), hacktivists, and internet gaming and chat fans, due to the social and contextual intersection between the communities.
[15] In Robert Bloch's 1956 short story, "A Way Of Life",[16] science-fiction fandom is the only institution to survive a nuclear holocaust and eventually becomes the basis for the reconstitution of civilization.
O'Donnell (aka Barry N. Malzberg), 1971, takes place at a New York City science-fiction convention and features broad parodies of many SF fans and authors.
A pair of SF novels by Gene DeWeese and Robert "Buck" Coulson, Now You See It/Him/Them and Charles Fort Never Mentioned Wombats are set at Worldcons; the latter includes an in-character "introduction" by Wilson Tucker (himself a character in the novel) which is a sly self-parody verging on a self-tuckerization.
The story includes a semi-illegal fictional Minneapolis Worldcon in a post-disaster world where science, and thus fandom, is disparaged.
