Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Perhaps I should explain...

I occurs to me that it is possible that some of the folks who read this blog, or who may stumble across the previous post, may not be science fiction fans, and may need some terms explained.

The first is that the plural of Science Fiction Fan is "FEN."  At one time it was common to use "fenne" for lady fen, I don't think that's in use anymore.

It may not be any less, either, I don't know, as Mrs. Drang and I have gaffiated.

s*i*g*h.  "GAFIATE": From GAFIA,  "Get Away From It All."  In the novel Fallen Angels Niven, Pournelle, and Flynn introduced "FAFIA", "Forced Away From It All", for those who had to hide their interest in geekish activities due to the anti-science-and-technology bent of society in that book.

And yes, fen are big on wordplay, like "it may not be any less...", or the propensity to coin acronyms.

FILK:  "Folk music for folk who ain't been born yet."  The story goes that, at an early con, there was a folk singing session on the program, with a typo someone felt compelled to explain away with a new definition.  Wordplay, see?

TRUFAN:  Goes to all the cons, has all the autographs, knows all the trivia.  If old enough, was probably instrumental in getting Sharyn McCrumb declared "The Salman Rushdie of fandom" for her murder mystery Bimbos Of The Death Sun.  Probably someone for whom Fandom Is A Way Of life, or

FIAWOL:  See TRUFAN. 

ZINE:  You probably know this is short for ""magazine", but fen--mostly trufen--were putting out zines on mimeograph machines decades before Al Gore invented the intenet.  And using acronyms and emoticons ("smilies.")  FanFic?  Fannish zines. 

In recent years decades (!) fannish traditions have spread to the reenacting and gaming worlds, especially through the Society for Creative Anachronism and it's splinter groups, and Dungeons and Dragons, ditto.

I guess we really have gafiated:  Now that I think of it, until yesterday, I hadn't really used much if any fanspeak since I started writing this thing four and a half years ago.  We've tentatively planned to de-gafiate a couple of times, but work or money got in the way. 

3 comments:

JeanC said...

We've seriously gafiated ourselves. Haven't been to a con in years. Planned on doing a RadCon a few years back, but like you said, things like money and work got in the way :(

BTW, LOVED "Bimbos of the Death Sun" just giggled all they way thru.

NotClauswitz said...

I was never sufficiently able to extricate or divide myself from my own self-consciousness enough to don a costume and join in on those things - that and the SCA group at Santa Cruz was such an uninspiring bunch of weedy rules-based twig-boy neck-beards who were easily shoved around and had no fight to be a Knight or a Page. They were pretending to be Pretenders while I was taking classes in Saber and Foil and beating opponents on the Soccer field - there just was no alignment or match-up.

Drang said...

Which is sad when you think that SCA was founded by Poul Anderson, among others.