Geis gave them the undiluted stuff in Psychotic, and its evident popularity sparked a trend for similar fanzines, typified by Al Snider's Crossroads.
Geis also resuscitated a lot of semi-gafiates. After the dreary post-Boondoggle years, Geis brought excitement back to fandom. Since, as previously stated, most fans' personalities have aspects of Trufannishness and Insurgentism, most had no trouble going with the times by assuming a critical posture.
The Rise of Insurgentism
When Commercialism, Professionalism and Serconism loom large in fandom, as they did in the late 1960s, it incites a reaction. These three philosophies tend to characterize fandom as part of an enabling process rather than as an end in itself. This threatens fans who invest more of themselves in the hobby, as opposed to the World of Science Fiction.
In this instance, Communicationists had more to gain from perpetuating fandom circa 1968 than from supplanting it with something else. SFR, Crossroads and the rest were a feast for those who enjoyed heavyweight intellectual sparring.
Trufans are committed to live-and-let-live. Thus it falls to the Insurgents to "defend" fandom against forces which seek to subordinate it to professional science fiction or substitute money for egoboo in the fanzine equation.
The bitter bidding war between St. Louis and Columbus for the 1969 worldcon became the focus of contention. Psy printed salvos from both armies to keep the battle going for at least a year.
What Insurgent could resist the chance to help those Missouri Trufans deflect the challenge of the proto-SMoFs from Ohio? A scan of the era's fanzines prompts the answer, "Not many."
It was a major showdown between fanzine fans and those who regarded bidding and controlling cons as an end in itself. Both groups, for different reasons, wanted to control the worldcon. (Fanzine fandom won that round, but con-runner victory was inevitable.)
Terry Carr and Ted White helped nudge fanzines in a more fannish direction starting around 1971. The Brooklyn Insurgents and Fabulous Falls Church Fandom were training grounds for many prominent fans.
The Brooklyn Insurgents, founded by rich and Colleen brown and myself. It started as an alternative to the Fanoclasts during the temporary schism in New York fannish fandom and survived to essentially replace FISTFA for the more fannish, fanzine oriented fans.
The Insurgents moved to Joyce and my Brooklyn Heights apartment shortly after we set up housekeeping in fall 1971. The Whites moved to Virginia, and the browns soon followed them to the DC area. |
They were the nucleus of Falls Church Fandom.
A new generation of fanzine fanzines flocked to the Brooklyn Insurgents. Regulars included: Terry Carr, Joyce Katz, Bill Kunkel, Ross Chamberlain, Chris Couch, David Emerson, Jerry Kaufman, Jay Kinney, Moshe Feder, Stu Shiffman, and me.
Our ghuru, Terry Carr had impeccable Trufan credentials. His Entropy Reprints, started in Joyce's Potlatch, soon had branches in several other frequent fanzines. This column exposed 1970s fandom to classics from otherwise-unobtainable fanzines. Lighthouse, though infrequent, was the fanzine we most admired.
Yet Terry was also a disciple of Charles Burbee, that devilishly genial apostle of Insurgentism. The Burbee of the 1960s, which we still called Terry in the 1970s, embodied Insurgentism's sunniest face. Like Burb, Terry favored the rapier over the sword and bemused condescension over snarling rage. He seldom, if ever, got into fannish fusses, but his trenchant observation of the fannish scene inspired the younger Brooklyn Insurgents to spice their Trufannishness with Insurgentism.
Falls Church had a slightly smaller cast (Ted and Robin White, rich and Colleen brown, Terry Hughes,
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