Yatterings

I occasionally venture into the realms of fandom. Not often I admit, well not as often I’d like to but I found a compilation of the writings of Francis Towner Laney on the efanzines website. These seem to be from the 1940s and 50s but fan history isn’t something that I’ve ever indulged in.
Its only a sampler of a compilation zine for sale (proceeds to Corflu) but the article is an interesting one person’s take on fandom and its surprising how much still rings true. He is clearly a print fan but you could argue that his points are relevant to the Internet. His definition is, quite simply, a person who engages with genre books and discusses them via letters, fanzines, short stories, art or even the pub! Its a social experience, or it ought to be, but not too serious and one with room for other pursuits to make the person rounded (and far less sociopathic really). He has a problem with those who remain rooted in fandom never venturing from this clingy shores and I’ve got sympathy with this view.

Fandom (books, comics, films, OSes and so on) ought to be one part of life - it can’t be everything to somebody. Its a conversation that happens across forums (forae?), blogs, podcasts, pints, orange juice, letters and email and it ought to encourage sharing stuff and news. Fandom as part of the Creative Commons drive? Why not? Share content, remix it.

It ought to be encouraging towards new people and those established but human nature seems to feature around forming cliques - but cliques talking to each other? Now that might be interesting… I’m as guilty as anybody else for this.

All I need do now is to find out more about the author of the piece and buy my copy.