Terms are difficult. There is a loosely defined cluster of groups of people that are keeping the heritage of the sort of fandom that draws its roots from the culture that resulted in Worldcon 1 in 1939, and has evolved in erratic spurts since then. Some keywords: Worldcon, WSFS, Hugo award, NASFiC. Boscon, NESFA. APAs. Fanzines. Semi-Prozines (Locus especially). Costumer's Guild and Costumecon. SMOF. Fans are Slans! Trekkie vs. Trekker. The advent of comparatively inexpensive xerography, replacing ditto, and followed by the initial explosion of personal computers and desktop publishing, led to a huge upsurge in fannish paper publication. BBSs run by fans, for fans, and the initial spread of email to the nerdier subgroups led to unprecedented first-gen electronic cultural connectivity; somewhat later the rise of Usenet broadened things still further. Generally inexpensive fuel prices, cheap cars and the interstate system, and airline deregulation allowed far more fans to travel to conventions outside their local area. Iconic films like 2001 and Star Wars, and TV shows like Star Trek, served as unifying beacons and popularizers. Home movie equipment became more practical, and fan-produced efforts like Hardware Wars became instant classics. The rise and then explosion of roleplaying games gave fans something else to do as a group and at cons.
All this was great stuff, and allowed fandom to surge forward and become more cross-connected. It seems to me that a lot of these factors were coming together in the mid-1960s through late-1980s or so, and reinforced each other. Conventions of all sizes sprung up like mushrooms after the rain. There was an 'old school' that was somewhat dismissive of the less literary and more media-centric trend, but they were increasingly marginalized, although some areas (NESFA-influenced North-East in particular) that remained a literary focus longer.
Why hasn't the expansion continued? In absolute terms, there are more people writing fan fiction, more people who have strong feelings about a SF or fantasy TV show's continuity, probably more people playing D20, more people who have engaged in an electronic argument about genre fictional characters, more people who have dressed up as wizards... why aren't there proportionally more people heavily involved in fandom culture? Because in this day and age, you don't *have* to be "in fandom" to do any of that, it's become pretty darn mainstream.
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Date: 2008-04-18 06:34 pm (UTC)All this was great stuff, and allowed fandom to surge forward and become more cross-connected. It seems to me that a lot of these factors were coming together in the mid-1960s through late-1980s or so, and reinforced each other. Conventions of all sizes sprung up like mushrooms after the rain. There was an 'old school' that was somewhat dismissive of the less literary and more media-centric trend, but they were increasingly marginalized, although some areas (NESFA-influenced North-East in particular) that remained a literary focus longer.
Why hasn't the expansion continued? In absolute terms, there are more people writing fan fiction, more people who have strong feelings about a SF or fantasy TV show's continuity, probably more people playing D20, more people who have engaged in an electronic argument about genre fictional characters, more people who have dressed up as wizards... why aren't there proportionally more people heavily involved in fandom culture? Because in this day and age, you don't *have* to be "in fandom" to do any of that, it's become pretty darn mainstream.