The (Lost) Language of Science-Fiction Fandom

The slang itself gafiated.

In “Language of Science Fiction Fandom,” written fifty years ago, Philip M. Cohen talked about the jargon developed among sci-fi fans of the mid-20th century.

Twenty-six years ago, I based the beginning of my creative career on that jargon, a decision I soon regretted.

As some of you know, my first webcomic was Fans at faans.com (with artist Jason Waltrip and various guests). In 1999, though, it was a print comic book called Faans. “Faans” was, at one time, an insidery term for fans more fannish than regular fans, in a good way. Some fans also used fen—pluralizing the word fan like you’d pluralize man or woman.

The closest equivalent today would be trufans (true fans, get it?). Some people might use stans, but that’s a little scarier and more derogatory out of context.

I thought calling the series Faans would advertise to a readership that, like me, was passionate about fandom and interested in its history. I did get some readers like that. But I also got so many confused looks that I concluded I’d done the impossible. I had become too eclectic for modern science-fiction fandom. In the online relaunch, I used the one-a title.

I gobbled up Cohen-style “fanspeak” when planning the comic, but much of it wasn’t part of my own experience. I did use mundane (fan’s term for a non-fan) now and then. One of my characters, Will Erixon, used the substitute swears popular in various sci-fi franchises (flark, frell, sprock, smeg, etc.). For him, such “false” swearing served a psychological need, setting him apart from his foul-mouthed, abusive father.

But I could never use “fan words” quite as much as I wanted. Here’s one exception that proves the rule.

In the Fans story “Out,” Shanna is wrestling with hidden parts of herself. She used to be the most reluctant Fans cast member, drawn to the Science Fiction Club only by her duties as a reporter and by Katherine, her oldest friend. Now, irony of ironies, Shanna’s growing closer to the group and fandom, but Katherine’s leaving both. Explaining herself to Shanna, Katherine lapses into fanspeak—then corrects herself.

Gafiation comes from “getting away from it all,” where “it all” is fandom. A gafiation story had been on my to-do list since the series’ earliest planning stages. That’s right: I liked the word (and its concept) so much, I built a whole subplot around it—albeit one furthering Katherine’s larger arc.

But “gafiate” was more 1970s fanspeak than 2000s fanspeak, so it’s a stretch for Katherine to use it at all—and I had to write the above scene so that unfamiliar readers would grasp its essential meaning right away.

Fans celebrated a subgroup on its way into the mainstream. The comic went online in 2000, the year X-Men hit theaters. But as the mainstream got more fannish, fans got more mainstreamish. The language in Cohen’s piece revolved around not just fan culture but fanzine culture—and Web based storytelling like mine was already displacing fanzines, rendering terms like nonstoparagraphing and ama-writer (non-stop paragraphing, amateur writer) obsolete.

Never mind the odd punctuations you’d find in those zines. While their usage of asterisks and “semi-cancellation” have descendants in *emphasis stars* and strikethrough text, the passage below is the first time in my life I’ve seen “quasi-quotemarks”:

Other terms, though, grew more familiar to the mainstream in the 2000s—con (for convention), anime, manga, cosplay, fanart, fanfic. I could use those freely and happily.

If you ever time-travel to the days before Star Wars and meet the sci-fi fans of yesteryear—who dreamed their fandom might be more accepted one day—they’ll probably be pleased if you mention you know what hyperspace is.

(Don’t tell them about the tech bros, though.)

Tomorrow: A few of my wordplay failures!