Dragaera

Fandom

Kenneth Gorelick pulmon at mac.com
Fri Jun 30 11:13:01 PDT 2006

On Jun 30, 2006, at 12:59 PM, Ken Koester wrote:

> Mia McDavid wrote:
>
>>
>> David Dyer-Bennet wrote:
>>
>>> Huh; for me, "fan" means somebody involved in fandom.  The term
>>> "reader" was the traditional term for, well, readers, who weren't
>>> involved in fandom.  The appearance of significant tv and film sf  
>>> has
>>> caused that to not really be the right term, and so people are  
>>> trying
>>> to fall back on "fan" and this is causing all sorts of confusion and
>>> bad feelings on both sides.
>>>
>> Silly.  Those other guys are fans, we are fen.  No, I don't know  
>> why we aren't in fendom and don't speak fennish, but these are the  
>> quirks of the language.
>>
> Though, IIRC, Lin Carter wrote an essay for =If= (anyone here from  
> the '60s still remember that mag?) decades ago in which he asserted  
> that fen indeed spoke fennish at one time.  Ghod, that takes me  
> back with a vengeance (-;
>
> Snarkhunter
>
Remember If, thought Analog and Galaxy were my preferred poison in  
those days. Is Ghod like alcoholh?