How Precious Was That While by Piers Anthony

Author:Piers Anthony [Anthony, Piers]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781429910279
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2011-02-15T21:00:00+00:00

Eleven

FANS

I actually entered prodom and fandom simultaneously. I had been an avid reader of the genre since my discovery of it in 1947. Fifteen years later, when I tried my first full-time writing year, I submitted stories to the magazines and joined the National Fantasy Fan Federation, NFFF or N3F, as mentioned in Chapter 8, “Collaborations.” But I was never much of a fan in the regular fannish sense. Essentially I went from avid reader to professional, with limited fan activity on the side. Most of my participation in fandom has been as a professional. Oh, yes, fandom includes professionals; it’s the arena where fans and pros interact. It has two broad categories: fanzines and conventions, and now a third is developing on the Internet. Fanzines are amateur magazines published by fans or pros for the interest and benefit of fans and pros, while conventions are gatherings put on by fan clubs with pro writers as guests, and publishers may also participate. The fans must pay to attend, while the pros attend free, and guests of honor have their travel expenses and accommodations paid. Over the years I have participated in both, and had some interesting experiences, but they have always been peripheral activities.

My fanzine experience has been so varied and detailed that it is pointless to try to cover it solidly here. I’ll try to cover the essence, however, and some more detailed examples. The N3F, which had been started by Damon Knight and then turned loose, had a lot of services for new members—“neofans”—and that was helpful, and it did introduce me to several other hopeful writers, with whom I did collaborations that were published. But it was so sloppily run that I dropped it after a year as a waste of time. There was a Los Angeles area science fiction society—LASFS—that published a fanzine to which I wrote. But soon my practice year of writing ended and I had to orient again on paying work. I had at that point sold two stories, and I continued to sell stories at the rate of two or three a year, so that I was building a gradual professional base. But my time for fanzine participation and correspondence was squeezed out by classes and homework.

When I returned to full-time writing in 1966 I had more time available, but I was focusing on writing novels, so really didn’t get into it for a while. One of the contacts I had made during my first year of writing, in 1962—63, was Ed Meskys, who helped me work on my Review Index. Later he left the Lawrence Radiation Lab and moved to New York, where he published a fanzine, Niekas, which is Lithuanian for “nothing.” I wrote an article about the Arabian Nights for him, based on my researches for Hasan, which was well received. In fact, Niekas won the Hugo Award for that year. When I attended the 1966 Milford Conference in Pennsylvania, I rode the bus to New York City, where Meskys met me and took me to his home for the night.

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