By John Hertz: Maybe they stay the same and maybe they don’t.
Filling up the corners, as hobbits say, of Hugo and Retro-Hugo nominating ballots, you might have looked at Le Zombie 48 (Brother Tucker’s fanzine, 1943) and noticed Page 4.
If not, I invite you. See here.
They’re answers to a set of questions he mailed.
Compare with fandom today. Never mind, for the moment, whether this was a representative sample. And there was, of course, a war on.
The answers he tabulated and printed were age and occupation.
Sixty-seven including him (27; movie projectionist). Age range, 14 – 48; mean, 28; mode, 21.
Okay, look at the occupations. Never mind the Army (four), the Navy (three), and “offense worker” (one; obviously Tucker couldn’t resist letting it stand). Never mind that eleven of sixteen age 18 or younger were student. In 1943 there was no one to say software engineer; look at the rest.
Tucker’s comment at the end was “What a motley crew!” Then he explained he wanted to know because he was building a space-ship.
I’ll not copy the list. See for yourself.
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The really important thing is that all those who are still around are very much older. The average age of fanzine fans now—excluding fans of TV, films, computer games—are all so much older they’re all likely on Social Security.
I wonder how many people reading F770 know what “FIAWOL” or “FIJAGH” stand for. Without using Google to look the phrase up.
I certainly know what “FIAWOL” and “FIJAGH” mean, but then I’m older than anyone on that list and have been around fandom for decades.
I know and I’m not quite Social Security ready yet.
I know, too, but it doesn’t worry me that not everyone does. They know other fannish things. There’s plenty of room in fandom.
I do, and I’m 46, and have only been very marginally involved in fandom. I just absorbed some of that stuff through bulletin boards and Usenet.
The spaceship-of-professions poll was done at one of the last downtown Disclaves (1977-79, when I started going; after that they were mostly in the suburbs). The results were not unexpected: half of the respondents were doing something with computers, leaving the hypothetical ship seriously short in a number of critical areas.
I’ve been in Maine Medical for the last three days as I got surgery for that infected left elbow. They took out the damaged bone out and determined that it was indeed a staph infection, quite severe. I’ll likely be here for several more days as I need an IV drip to treat it and they’ve yet figured exactly which strain of staph it is. I’m told it can take up to five days to culture the samples.
It also damaged the tendons above the elbow but likely those will repair themselves with time.
Cat, I’m glad you’re getting appropriate treatment and I hope they knock down the infection soon.
Glad to hear you’re getting treatment, Cat. Get better soon.
Cat, best results hoped for, and an easy time.