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When the Windycon Committee asked me to be the fan guest of honour, my immediate reaction was that they must have taken leave of their collective senses. Me—a fan guest of honour? Everybody knows that I am eminently unsuitable for that position as I am not a fan, never have been a fan, never will be a fan; I despise fandom and refuse to have anything to do with fannish activities in any way shape or form. Me a fan—nonsense! I’ve written dozens of fanzine articles pointing this out to anyone who will listen. The Windycon committee obviously had no idea what it was up to. I began to have serious doubts about its ability to organise a convention.
And then I met my wife’s sister.
Now that is not quite the non sequitur it might appear at first glance. Wishing to make conversation, and knowing that I had an interest in SF, she asked “What is this science fiction thing? What do you do at conventions? What is a fan?”
I waved my arms around in an eloquent manner, rolled my eyes towards Rosemary in a desperate plea for help which she desperately ignored, made a sort of strangulated half moan deep in my throat and said, “Well… you know”.
Now as a means of conveying information, I would be the first to admit that this response lacked a little lucidity. It began to dawn on me that if I couldn’t even give my sister-in-law a satisfactory answer to the question “What is a Fan?” then I obviously didn’t know anything about fans. This in itself raised the terrible possibility that perhaps the Windycon committee really did know what they were doing when they asked me to be fan guest of honour. Perhaps they knew what a fan was; perhaps I really was one after all and didn’t know it. All sorts of terrifying possibilities presented themselves.
I decided to do some research to find out what a fan was and to decide once and for all whether I was one or not.
The place to start was obviously the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Volume 9, Extradition to Garrick.
Immediately I got distracted. Where was Garrick and why did people get extradited there? Was it some sort of Central European breeding ground for criminals who committed dastardly crimes, fled to foreign parts and were constantly being extradited back to their homeland? Perhaps Rosemary and I could pass through it on our way to England in July. Did we need a visa?
Have you ever noticed that whenever you look something up in a dictionary or an encyclopaedia, everything except the topic of concern immediately takes on an attractiveness it never had before?
But I refused to let myself get too distracted. The topic was Fans: that was what I needed to know about. There it was, on page fifty-nine, immediately after Famine and just before Fang. This is what it said:
Fans may be divided into two main groups—the rigid fan and the folding fan. The rigid fan has a handle or stick with a rigid mount. On a folding fan is mounted a leaf which is pleated so that the fan may be opened or closed.
Since hardly any fans have survived from ancient times our knowledge of them is based on pictorial evidence. The shape varied enormously. The ladies of classical Greece carried small rigid fans and their example was followed in the Roman world.
From time immemorial the fan has played an important part in Chinese and Japanese life. They were carried by men as well as women and there were many classes, each reserved for a special purpose. With so much significance attached to the fan, a great deal of attention was paid to its decoration and the exquisite taste displayed in the embellishment of Chinese and Japanese fans has never been equalled.
Surviving fans of the baroque period in Europe are rather rare but are all of high quality. During the middle decades of the seventeenth century the folding fan came into prominence in Europe. The fans are usually quite narrow with a slight swelling below the leaf. They may be plain or inlaid with silver pique work in delicate patterns.
By the eighteenth century the fan was an indispensable part of any lady’s toilette. The finest fans of this period are exquisite objects. They have long been sought by collectors, and dealers have satisfied this demand by providing many not very convincing imitations as well as actual forgeries, particularly in the nineteenth century.
The fans of the rococo period of the late eighteenth century are generally larger than those of any other period. There is more charm but less gusto about their decoration.
Very small fans with a radius of about eight inches were in favour during the first three decades of the nineteenth century, but fans were apparently not carried much during the 1840s. About the middle of the century fans became larger again and fan sizes continued to increase during the latter part of the century, some late Victorian fans being more than 20 inches long.
After about 1900 the fan began to die out. The busy woman of the twentieth century found it an encumbrance and to some extent its place was taken by the cigarette.
The next heading was Fan (Mechanical) which I took to be a discussion of robotic fans which was not really applicable. It was followed by Fanfare which is obviously just another name for a fan convention.
That was all the encyclopaedia had to say on the subject of fans. I found it fascinating. Fans obviously went much further back in history than I had previously been aware. I was still a little hazy as to exactly what a fan might be—the descriptions were contradictory. I determined to do a bit more digging into the historical aspects of the subject and I went back to my reference books.
The earliest mention of fandom in history was uncovered by that indefatigable researcher into times past, Bob Shaw. His studies let him to the conclusion that the first fan of note was a Frenchman called Norman who travelled to England in the year 1066 looking for an SF convention. Because he was looking so hard for a con, his search is generally known as the Norman Con Quest. History does not record how successful Norman was in his search, but the fact that he came all the way from France suggests that there was already a widely established network of fan communication in place, even though it is not well documented. We can probably put this failing down to the fact that William Caxton hadn’t invented the Gestetner yet since he wasn’t born until 1422.
The next three hundred years are shrouded in mystery. All we know of the period is that fans gathered together in groups all over England. We assume that this was for mutual protection—perhaps there was some sort of fannish persecution going on at the time. These fan groups were known as monasteries and the fans were known colloquially as monks—the derivation of the words is obscure.
All we know of fandom during this period is that the monks produced many thousands of fanzines which were stored carefully in the monasteries and never sent out to anybody since the post office wasn’t due to be invented until 1840.
Some of these early fanzines are most beautiful works of art. They were all produced by hand, and it was at this time that the practice of drawing bug eyed monsters all around the capital letters was introduced. The practice has largely fallen out of fashion now, and I find modern fanzines much less illuminating as a result.
The major SF event of the year 1387 was the publication of the first episode of “Doc” Chaucer’s epic of old Stonehenge, The Canterbury Tales, published in Flabberghasting Fiction of Olde Englande, Volume 1, Number 10. Although many critics feel that the work was inferior to his later Foundation Garment trilogy, nevertheless it almost singlehandedly led to the revival of fandom and brought it out of the monasteries where it had languished for the last three hundred years.
The first convention of which we have documentary evidence was held that year at Stonehenge and contemporary prints make much of the event.
The monorail track around the top of the edifice was specially refurbished for the occasion and a secret master of fandom was ritually disembowelled on the altar stone and won the fancy dress competition posthumously. One judge refused to vote for him however on the grounds that his entrails were offal. But this was put down to sour grapes, and the business session passed a motion to restrict the sale of wine at the bar in future in favour of beer.
Despite this convention, however, the monasteries continued to be the centre of all fannish activities until about the year 1530 when Henry VIII began the fan feud which history calls the dissolution of the monasteries. The origins of this feud are shrouded in mystery. We know that in 1521 Henry adopted the title “defender of the faith” (or in Latin, Frankus Macskasium) and there has been some speculation that the power and influence associated with this title had something to do with it. But whatever the reason, fandom was divided in two and the feud continued long after Henry’s death and well into the reign of his daughter Elizabeth, culminating in 1588 with the terrible Fannish Armada.
This was caused directly by Francis Drake who was a lazy man, constantly sleeping in his hammock a thousand miles away and refusing to come to room parties. This annoyed the fans of the time, and they challenged him to a game of Trivial Pursuit. He refused, and everybody said contemptuously that it was because he didn’t have the bowls for it.
The fleet action was fast and furious with the fans struggling hard to tie pieces of string together. Statisticians who analysed the string after the battle discovered that the fans were averaging six knots to the galleon.
The air seemed to clear a bit after this, possibly because Elizabeth’s arms were harder than anyone else’s, and nobody wanted to get thumped. The fannish feuds died down and in the relative peace that ensued, fandom flowered as it had never flowered before. The highlight was the publication in 1592 of Sex Pirates of the Blood Asteroids, one of Shakespeare’s lesser known works.
The play is seldom performed these days—I have no idea why—but it caused a sensation at the time. Locus printed a rumour that it was to be filmed and Anne Hathaway changed her name to Sigourney Weaver in anticipation of stardom, but when she realised that she would have to wait four hundred years for Hollywood to be invented she retired to the second best bed and sulked.
The next two hundred years are generally referred to as the Middle Ages since the majority of fans of the time were in their forties. It was probably this unusual fannish maturity which lead to the invention in the early eighteenth century of the industrial revolution.
Without the industrial revolution and the impetus it gave to scientific research it is more than likely that science fiction would have remained a minority interest at best, appealing only to scholars in search of a thesis topic. But SF and the industrial revolution grew up together arm in arm, the one reinforcing the other, so to speak. We owe our very appearance here at this convention to the industrial revolution, to the steam engine that powered it and to James Watt, the man who invented it. It seems to me that if any man can be called the father of SF that man is James Watt. Without him and his steam engine there would be no science fiction as we know it today.
Once I had reached this conclusion I wrote immediately to the British Science Fiction Association, explaining my reasoning, presenting my evidence and suggesting that perhaps they should do something to honour this man.
They wrote back by return of post. Apparently the idea was not original with me and they had in fact been working on it for some time. Indeed, they had recently exhumed the body of James Watt and put it up for auction, the proceeds of which they proposed to donate to the 1987 Worldcon in Brighton. Had they known of my research, they said, then they would have invited me to represent New Zealand at the auction. They were sorry they were too late for that, however they were sure that I would be pleased to know that the highest bidder at the auction had been a certain Nigel Rowe who was presumably even now on his way back to New Zealand with the body.
Since they had neglected to put any stamps on the envelope, the letter had travelled sea mail via Alpha Centauri and took nearly three months to reach me. Nigel and the body of James Watt were presumably long back in the country. I went round to see Nigel immediately.
He let me in, and I explained why I was there. He looked a little sheepish (which is very appropriate for a country like New Zealand, when you think about it); and he admitted that yes, he did have the body. Would I like to see it? Well of course I said I would, and he took me into the kitchen, opened up the deep freeze and showed me the wee preserved body lying there. “I declared it as Educational Material on the customs form,” he told me. “So they didn’t charge me anything”.
He was ever so proud of himself, but as I was leaving, he made me promise that I wouldn’t tell anybody what he had done. I was puzzled, but eventually I realised that he didn’t want anyone to know about it because he wanted to give his friends a nice surprise when he invited them for dinner and served Watties.
I wondered what the entree would be. Campbells soup, perhaps?
But I digress. The eighteenth century turned imperceptibly into the nineteenth century and a lady called Mary Shelley published the novel which Brian Aldiss considers to be the first modern SF novel—Frankenstein, a book about a New York Jewish pawnbroker called Solomon Frankenstein whose hobby is making science fiction writers out of the bits and pieces that people pawn in his shop. A pair of false teeth, an artificial limb and a typewriter—Piers Anthony!
It was about this time that the craze for apple bobbing at room parties swept through fandom. It appears to be largely due to one particular fan who, because of his fondness for apples, was nicknamed Isaac after Isaac Newton. Isaac was often to be seen at room parties munching on a Granny Smith. Sometimes he ate apples too. He introduced the game of apple bobbing at a convention and it caught on immediately. Isaac was ecstatic. He was the centre of attention. Everyone was playing his game. He enjoyed the praise and the adulation, but deep inside he knew that it was only temporary, that the craze would soon die and that he would be forgotten again. Moodily crunching up a Cox’s Orange Pippin and spitting the seeds at the budgerigar, he began to wonder how to keep himself in the public eye a little longer.
And then he had the idea which assured him of immortality. Nude apple bobbing!
Up to this time, Isaac had always acted with perfect decorum. Give him a box of apples and he would decorum perfectly. But now it was time for a change. Nude apple bobbing would allow everyone to show off their talents. It couldn’t fail.
Pausing only to remove all his clothes and pick up a crate of Golden Delicious, he raced off to a room party. He flung wide the door and charged stark naked into the room.
“Hey look everybody,” yelled a voice from the crowd, “Isaac as’em off”.
The nineteenth century was principally noted for the charge of the light brigade which was fannish jargon for the large electricity bills they had to pay to keep their printing presses running. These bills were the main reason for the decline in fannish activity in the latter years of the century. Indeed there were so few fans around by the start of the twentieth century that absolutely no interest at all could be generated in the fan feud that started at the time. The feud was so dull as a consequence that it has become known as the Bore War.
The twentieth century is noted mainly for the invention of Hugo Gernsback. He was invented in America in 1926 and it is generally agreed that without him fandom as we know it today would not exist. This may or may not be a good thing, it is very difficult for me to tell since despite all my research into the subject, all the long hours spent delving into the archives of fannish history I have still been unable to make up my mind as to exactly what fandom is and what distinguishes fans from people. I have been completely unable to answer the question that has plagued my every waking moment for the last twelve months ever since the Windycon committee asked me to be the fan guest of honour here. Am I a fan? I have no idea.
So I suppose I will have to leave it up to you to decide. What do you think?
With thanks to The Encyclopaedia Britannica whose article I slightly abridged; to Bob Shaw, one of whose Eastercon speeches provided a joke which I stole; and to Brian Aldiss, one of whose jokes (heavily modified to suit local conditions) provided one of the central ideas.
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