dragaera-request at dragaera.info wrote: Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2006 12:59:26 -0400 From: Ken Koester <kkoester at email.ers.usda.gov> Subject: Re: Fandom 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 ------------------------------ Yes, I remember the existence of _IF_ and Lin Carter. :> I doubt think I ever got to read the former. I often enjoyed the anthologies that Lin edited... Brought up by "Shawn Burns" <shawnb at stanford.edu> The problem I have with "geek" is that you then have to put something descriptive with it. Now "geek" has rather taken the place that fan-as-fanatic occupied. [Groupie?] I have said "Trekkie" or "Trek geek" without a blink. I probably wouldn't say the latter to my parents, but I know others that I could say either to easily. I'll skip the newer "media" geek/fan category, okay? I've been a sf/f fan for twenty-odd years. Been part of fandom only slightly longer. I got involved in cons, as it were, 2-3 years after becoming addicted to sf/f. Fen and fennish - sometimes neither of those bother me. At other times they do. Perhaps because "fen" is an in-term and requires explanation outside of fandom. Maybe because I grew up reading "fan" as meaning Us. Hard to say. Just as "mundane" has come to mean Them, the "Philistines" and unbelievers =grin= as Asimov once dubbed non-fans. Heh. By that light I'm a Philistine for legions of various passions, in and out of fandom. :> I'm a Whedon heretic because I love Firefly but perceive it as flawed; and I see no value *FOR ME* in the other Whedon series. =shrug= I've noticed that many readers seem to feel lessened. I hear "Oh, but I'm not really a fan" apologetically. As if True Fans are part of a sf community. As if "just" reading isn't good enough. As if only shared passions are valuable. =frown= As if you must attend an sf con or [some other implied rule]; otherwise you don't matter. That, more than anything else, is what bothers me when I hear that tone of voice. Maybe I'm just imagining that shading when another "just a reader" writes in toneless email. Most of my time as a fan has been spent just reading! Two hundred years ago, I would've been a bluestocking, when reading too much was a worse social sin. I'll always be a reader. It's frightening that we gripe about literacy and yet it's still somehow bad to be a reader. I'm glad that everyone here does read. Whether you call yourselves readers or not. :> --- A.S. Zanoni Personal Assistant to Steven Brust Steven's Travel & Event Schedule: http://www.angelfire.com/fang/dreamcafe_chica