Fandom's Higher Purpose

Reposted from a comment on over at the Mad Genius Club. This article summarizes the emergence of the science fiction fandom and the fan convention in the 1930s. My comments follow.

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Our Higher Purpose

by David B Williams

Not surprisingly, this too began with Hugo Gernsback.

He published what he chose to call “scientifiction” stories in his radio and electronics magazines years before he launched Amazing Stories, the first magazine dedicated to SF.

Since he wasn’t responding to a market demand by providing SF stories to his amateur-radio and science-hobbyist readers, Gernsback must’ve thought this type of story conveyed some special value to this audience. He didn’t give them westerns or detective thrillers.

Radio was the most futuristic development the early 20th century. Telegraph and telephone signals traveled along visible wires, like wagons along roads and barges along canals. Electricity also traveled through wires, like water or gas through pipes.

But radio signals were invisible, undetectable until captured and converted to sound by and electronic receiver. Radio signals went everywhere, even passing through solid walls, unconfined to any kind of pre-existing conduit. This was sense-of-wonder technology.

Gernsback’s readers were up to speed on this new technology and wanted to know what was coming next. They viewed science is an endless cornucopia of progress. They were future-oriented and expected more big changes and amazing technologies to come, an ideal audience for the scientifiction stories Gernsback offered them.

But Gernsback wasn’t just providing entertainment to those readers. He believed SF’s mission was to awaken readers to the power and potential of science, to stimulate the imaginations of scientists and inventors, and even inspire readers to seek careers in science. The readers who read about future wonders could then help to make those wonders come true. Unlike westerns, detective tales, or love stories, SF had a job to do. SF had a higher purpose.

In 1926, Gernsback described the ideal SF story as “a charming romance interwoven with scientific facts and prophetic vision,” proclaiming his model of SF as the bearer of science education and prediction. And he never changed his mind. When he launched his last SF magazine, Science-Fiction Plus, in 1953, the subtitle was “preview of the future.”

Gernsback emphasized this higher purpose in his editorials, and he transmitted this kind of thinking to his readers. It’s no surprise that the earliest stirrings of organized SF fandom came from science hobbyists who were at least as interested in the science of SF as in the fiction.

The first two recognized fanzines were pubbed by these amateur-science enthusiasts. The Comet appeared in May 1930 as the journal of the Science Correspondents Club, followed two months later by The Planet from the New York Scienceers. The pages of both publications were devoted to science, although The Planet also included reviews of recent prozine content.

The International Scientific Association tried to mix the amateur scientists and SF fans, but the fans soon became dominant. The first two Eastern SF conferences (Philadelphia 1936, New York City 1937) were essentially exchange visits between delegations from the ISA’s two major branches.

The growing rift between science and science fiction was simply the first dispute royale of fandom’s first decade. But that dispute didn’t spark widespread feuding. The fans simply won by attrition. The focus on science gradually waned, replaced by increasing attention to SF and to fandom itself.

But if fandom wasn’t about promoting science, what was it about? If, as Gernsback claimed, SF had a higher purpose, shouldn’t SF fandom also have a higher purpose? This question plunged all fandom into war.

The Futurians, a group of New York City fans who coalesced around Donald A. Wollheim in the mid-1930s (and thus were written initially known in fandom as “Wollheimists”), would prove to be the driving force behind this conflict.

In addition to Wollheim, key Futurians included John Michel, Fred Pohl, Cyril Kornbluth, Robert “Doc” Lowndes, and, in a widening circle, Richard Wilson, Dave Kyle, Damon Knight, James Blish, Larry Shaw, Jack Gillespie, even Isaac Asimov, though he was really only one of several social affiliates who did not participate in actual combat.

Wollheim and his circle could not countenance the idea that fandom could just be for fun. Gernsback had already explained that SF had a higher purpose. The Futurians believe that SF fandom also needed a higher purpose.

Wollheim classified most fans as “shallow-minded adolescents” and considered discussion of SF as “childish” and “inane”. His goal was to “raise science-fiction from merely a childish puerile hobby to being an active force toward the realization of those things that science fiction already believed.”

At the third Eastern convention in Philadelphia in 1938, Wollheim read a speech entitled “Mutation or Death” written by fellow Futurian Michel, whose severe stutter made him incapable of delivering the oration. This speech introduced the doctrines of Michelism to fandom.

According to Wollheim, “Michelism is the belief that science-fiction fans should actively work for the realization of the scientific socialist world-state as the only genuine justification [emphasis added] for their activities.”

The address ended with the proposed resolution:

“THEREFORE: Be it moved that this, the Third Eastern Science-Fiction Convention, shall place itself on record as opposing all forces leading to barbarism, the advancement of pseudo-sciences and militaristic ideologies, and shall further resolved that science-fiction should by nature [emphasis added] stand for all forces working for more unified world, a more Utopian existence, the application of science to human happiness, and a saner outlook on life.”

After prolonged debate, the motion was defeated 12-8, with several extensions. No one voted against the resolution’s content, but the opponents did object to introducing politics into fan affairs.

In 1940, as General Secretary of the Futurian League, Wollheim defined a Futurian as one who, through SF [emphasis added], attains a vision of the greater world, a greater future for the whole of mankind. A Futurian seeks to utilize his idealistic convictions, always a democratic, impersonal, and unselfish ways, for the betterment of the world.

General Secretary! Working behind all this was Communism, the doctrine that dared not speak its name. Textbook Communism (“the scientific socialist world-state”) embodied all the utopian principles that appealed to idealists in the 1930s. Several Futurians joined or attended meetings of the Young Communist League, and Michel joined the Party when he was old enough.

The question remains as to whether “Michelism” was really initiated by Michel or whether Wollheim nominated Michel as the titular leader to deflect attention from himself. Recall that President Truman, fearing Congressional opposition to anything that bore his name, cunningly called his reconstruction program for Europe “the Marshall Plan.”

Some kind of conflict was inevitable in the first World SF Convention convened in New York in July 1939, because the Futurians had lost ownership of the event. Leading Futurians had been appointed to the planning committee two years earlier but had accomplished nothing. So, at the New York “national convention” in 1938, Sam Moscowitz, William Sykora, and their New Fandom group stepped forward and were authorized to form a new organizing committee.

It must’ve been bitterly infuriating to the Futurians to know that they had allowed this plum to be plucked from their fingers by their despised opponents, and then to see those opponents host a very successful, even historic, meeting.

As fans from across the country gathered in Caravan Hall, the Futurians handed out pamphlets crying alarm and warning fans about the nefarious plans of the “controlling clique.” Headings included “Beware of the Dictatorship!” and “High Handed Tactics.”

This agitprop Salvo perturbed Chairman Moscowitz, who feared that the Futurians were bent on disrupting the convention. He therefore decreed that any Futurians not already in the hall who did not pledge to behave would be banned from the proceedings.

Six of the Futurians (Gillespie, Kornbluth, Lowndes, Michel, Pohl, Wollheim) refused to give such an assurance and, as a result, never got to attend the First World Con. Thus arose the infamous Exclusion Act.

Moscowitz later speculated that the targeted Futurians welcomed their exclusion, because they thereby gained the advantageous position of victims. Crying injustice and fascism, they subsequently garnered widespread sympathy throughout fandom.

Anyway, the war was on to expunge fascism and restore democratic principles to fannish affairs. Fanzines on both sides were filled with accusatory diatribes. It was hard to find fans who didn’t take sides. It was hard for fans who didn’t give a damn and to enjoy SF and fandom in peace.

But in their quest to give fandom a higher purpose, the Futurians and chosen the wrong tactics. Even sympathetic fans came to resent the intrusion of politics and fandom, for whatever reason. And the Futurians’ aggressive attacks on their opponents became more and more tiresome to uncommitted observers.

And what was all the fuss about? What the Futurians offered was not an action program but resolutions. For them, it was enough that fandom express its support for Right Thinking. This was all very exciting. They were engaged in the Great Struggle. They were doing something.

But it was all talk. The Futurians did not choose to engage in the politics of the Real World. Instead, they focus their considerable energies on becoming SF writers and editors and disrupting fandom with her obstreperous behavior. They were successful in both endeavors.

It became widely believed that the Futurians’ operating principle was simply “Rule or Ruin”. For example, Wollheim and three Futurian acolytes showed up at a meeting of the Sykora-led Queens SFL chapter and joined. This seemed odd because Sykora was on the Futurians enemies list. However, he was absent from that meeting and no one objected to admitting the new members.

It wasn’t long before the Futurians sparked dissension with a motion to send a delegate to a leftist youth Congress. Director James Taurasi blocked a vote. The Futurians accused him of dictatorship and initiated impeachment proceedings. They also blackballed new members who were known to oppose Michelism.

Sykora skipped some meetings because of the newly hostile atmosphere, and the Futurians used in attendance requirement in the bylaws to expel them. Taurasi was subject to a second impeachment proceeding and resigned in disgust. Both sides appealed to SFL headquarters at Thrilling Wonder Stories. Leo Margulies, magazine publisher and SFL director, dispensed with the problem by declaring the chapter dissolved.

In just six months, the Futurians had penetrated and destroyed an active and growing club. If the original plan had been to take over the SFL chapter, the Futurians had made wonderful progress, expelling the president and forcing the director to resign. But dissolution of the chapter left the Futurians with nothing to control.

They then formed the Futurian Science-Literary Society of New York, but most of the non-Futurians followed Sykora and Taurasi into a new and thriving Queens SFL. So, in the end, the Futurians won a Pyrrhic victory.

In 1945, after a pause for World War II, several Futurians holding Fantasy Amateur Press Association offices resigned and formed the Vanguard Amateur Press Association with an all-Futurians board. Based on past performance, it was immediately alleged that they were set on wrecking FAPA, and replacing it with an APA that they totally controlled.

But that was the end of it. The world war had changed things. Real fascism had been defeated on the battlefield, and Communism had revealed itself as a flawed Ghod. In the postwar world, and following internal dissensions (revolutions always devour their own), the Futurians dispersed, in turn, to grown-up careers and marriages. Fandom could no longer demand the total commitment of their energies and ambitions. It was time to get on with life.

Gernsback’s faith in SF’s power to educate readers and inspire them to enter the sciences was not totally misplaced. A number of space scientists have acknowledged that reading SF in their formative years helped to guide them into scientific careers. But they certainly didn’t learn their science from SF, and the number of scientists truly recruited by SF was minimal.

Of more concern within the genre was the effect of Gernsback’s formula on the development of SF’s fiction. Western stories didn’t screech to a halt to explain how cattle-ranching works. Why did SF stories need to pause to explain the science? Rather than being the Father Of Magazine Science Fiction, fandom might have chosen to honor Gernsback as the Father Of The Info Dump.

Following the glory days of Gernsback’s preeminence, writers and critics began to challenge his literary ideology. According to Gary Westfahl in the online edition of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, “some maintain that Gernsback’s impact on SF was harmful because it led to a sterilized in didactic insistence that the road to the future was best apprehended through a focus on science and technology in isolation.”

He cites Brian Aldiss’s assessment of Gernsback as “the worst disaster ever to hit the science fiction field” and adds: “virtually all later voices for SF reform – from John W. Campbell, Jr. and H. L. Gold to the New Wave’s Harlan Ellison and Cyberpunk’s Bruce Sterling – have explicitly or implicitly presented their ideas is a repudiation of Gernsback.”

In the end, the good guys won, in both SF and fandom. SF became less concerned about scientific plausibility and prophecy and more concerned about character development and narrative technique. SF’s job was to awaken a sense of wonder, not a sense of purpose. And, within fandom, the advocates of science fiction and fandom for its own sake replace the amateur scientists and wanna-be Communists.

SF did not need to justify itself with a higher purpose, nor did its associated fandom. It was okay to just have fun.

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Given history and the current resurgence of the ideas and tactics of the Futurian Goodthink crusade in science fiction, I disagree that the conclusion has ever been realized. Most authors' disagreements with Gernsback were over his inability to pay a proper rate on schedule--a valid complaint, I might add. But, as is too common with science fiction fandom, the rationale of literary criticism emerges after expulsion from the good graces of fandom, not before. And contrary to this article, the repudiation of Gernsback's message fic was not of his message, but of his methods. After all, a little entertainment sugar made the medicine of the message go down...