Astounding Wonder: Imagining Science and Science Fiction in Interwar America

7. “Fandom Is Just a Goddamn Hobby”: The Industry of Fans and Professionals

7 “FandomIsJustaGoddamnHobby”: TheIndustryofFansandProfessionals “I am a member of the Science Fiction Association,” Eric C. Hopkins of 2c Stirling Road, London, wrote to Amazing Stories in 1938, “and am writing in response to your request for the results of letters published in your Discussions columns.” Acknowledging Amazing for printing an earlier letter in its April 1937 issue, he said, “Please accept my deepest thanks,” for “it has opened up many avenues of stf. [scientifiction] which I never knew existed.” That first letter, he reported, had drawn letters from readers in the United States from Iowa, New Jersey, and Washington and from a “young lady cowpuncher ” in Texas, and it had also put him in touch with several “Britishers ” with whom he corresponded weekly and with London members of the Science Fiction Association with whom he was busy arranging face-to-face meetings. “I am no longer alone,” he wrote. “It may not sound much, but to me it means a lot because I am able to discuss science fiction with all sorts of people, whereas formerly I vented my spleen on the Editors. When you are getting letters almost continuously, it is quite hard work, but still it’s good fun.”1 Hopkins’s experience was not unusual. Science fiction readers’ letters led to exchanges within and through the backyard of their pulps, and for many, to activities beyond them. As their conversations led to face-to-face meetings and more, their understanding of their community and their roles within it also changed and developed. Enthusiastic about science and science fiction beyond reading, many formed clubs and associations, some through correspondence and others meeting locally in person. Inspired and encouraged by pulp contests and features, some wrote stories and articles, while others, 216 Practice using available, low-cost reproduction technologies, edited and published their own pamphlets and magazines. Their proliferating practices reinforced, even as they redefined, Hugo Gernsback’s original public and genre. By the mid to late 1930s many members of science fiction’s community identified themselves specifically as fans. “What we science-fiction fans mostly wanted to do with each other’s company was to talk,” Frederik Pohl recalled, “about science fiction, and about the world.”2 Fans’ success beyond talking, however, complicated their community. As their argument, which began in the late 1930s, about whether “fandom is a way of life” (“FIAWOL”) or “fandom is just a goddamn hobby” (“FIJAGH”) indicated , the activities of members were serious, involving, and divided; indeed, that their community was perhaps several social networks.3 Once established and announced, clubs and magazines competed for members, readers, and distinction. Many members maintained casual sociability at their own pace, pursuing causes where and when they arose. Some, however, adhered earnestly to science fiction’s progressive claims, seeking to advance science and society. Still others approached science fiction lightly but still seriously, reveling in its entertaining and mischievous sociability. Recognizing their popularity , pulp editors formed clubs and leagues associated with their magazines and hired fans as both writers and editors. They discovered, however, that the community their magazines fostered extended beyond their pages and their control. Given the means, fans exercised their own self-determination and authority. While some nonfan readers joined pulp-sponsored clubs, these were short-lived because of the already present internecine competition between existing fans and clubs. Similarly, while many fans readily accepted the opportunity to sell stories to and work for science fiction pulps, some also came to prefer writing and publishing on their own. Increasingly separating the realms of “fanzines” and “prozines”—the terms they used to distinguish amateur fan publications from the commercial pulps—fans learned to live the experiences of both. In this sense if fandom was a product of science fiction ’s community, it was also a calibration of class and class dynamics within its popular culture. Fans’ broader collective sensibility, however, still contained these differences . While they competed and squabbled with one another and with professional publishers and editors, science fiction fans maintained enough cohesion to organize regional and, by the end of the 1930s, national and worldwide science fiction conventions. Although critics of interwar pulp magazines expressed concern about readers’ easy leisure—recall Miss Anita 217 “GoddamnHobby” Forbes’s elegant characterization, “entertainment without exercise”—science fiction readers were enthusiastic and industrious. As Eric Hopkins observed, their communal activities were good fun and hard work. Industry in forging social relations and opportunities led science...