( I ) — CONTENTS
IAOPUMUMSTFPUSA / “I HAVE A COSMIC MIND – NOW WHAT DO I DO?” / IMAGINATIVE FICTION SOCIETY / INTERLINEATIONS / ISA / “IT IS A PROUD AND LONELY THING TO BE A FAN”
— Which, as we all know, stands for “International and Allied Organizations for the Purpose of Upholding and Maintaining the Use of Metallic Fasteners in Scientific-Fiction Publications in the United States of America”. This founded by Donald Wollheim in 1934. All part of the joyous chaos of the First Staple War.
[ See STAPLE WAR (FIRST) ]
“I HAVE A COSMIC MIND – NOW WHAT DO I DO?”
— Claude Degler’s crusade in the early 1940s to unite Cosmen (fans) who universally possess Cosmic Minds (mutant superhuman intellect) in order to dominate the Solar System got on people’s nerves. Some fan whose nickname was ‘juffus’ (Actual name? My Fancyclopedia 1 source is incomplete) decided to bug Degler by sending him postcards from all over the US with the single line: “I have a cosmic mind – now what do I do?”
Whether this exasperated Degler, or simply drove him into paroxysms of effort to enlighten ‘juffus’ & other fans with the appropriate answer, I do not know. At any rate, other fans found this a useful and amusing gagline, no doubt employing it as an interlineation from time to time. (JS) (DE)
[ See CIRCLE AMATEUR PUBLISHER’S ALLIANCE, COLUMBIA SCIENCE FANTASY SOCIETY, COSMIC CAMP, COSMIC CIRCLE, COSMIC CLOD, COSMEN, COSMIC CONCEPT, COSWORMS, DEGLER CLAUDE, FUTURE FANTASY FRENCH, MARTIAN MESSAGE, PLANET FANTASY FEDERATION ]
IMAGINATIVE FICTION SOCIETY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VICTORIA
— Founded in the fall of 1983 as a replacement for the defunct UVic SF Association. Published the newsletter WHAT IFS and the Fictionzine WORLDS OF IFS, later combined into one zine titled COME HOLD THE MOON. (Detail to be added)
[ See WHAT IFS, WORLDS OF IFS, & COME HOLD THE MOON ]
INTERLINEATIONS
— A single sentence framed by lines above and below, often used to define the space between the end of one article and the beginning of another, though sometimes printed at the top or bottom of a page with no relation to the contents of the rest of the page, or even in a series at the top or bottom of every page in a zine. Rarely, as a sequence of unconnected sentences on a zine cover, a concept known as a ‘Quote-Cover’. (DE)
Interlineations can be non-fannish quotes, but more often are delightfully odd fan-created statements or questions which peak one’s curiosity and imagination. Classic examples are:
—————————————–
Who sawed Courtney’s boat?
—————————————–
and
————————–
Yngvi was a louse.
————————–
or my personal favourite:
———————————————————————-
Are there not still fungi in the forests of Vermont?
———————————————————————-
One very famous interlineation appeared in Charles Burbee’s Spring 1954 issue of THE FANTASY AMATEUR:
—————————————————————————————————————
I’d rather be the first man in a small village than rule the Sevagram, he thought.
—————————————————————————————————————
[ See QUOTE COVER, COMMENT COVER, SEVAGRAM, WHO SAWED COURTNEY’S BOAT, YNGVI WAS A LOUSE ]
ISA
— Acronym for ‘International Scientific Association’. Under its original title ‘The Science Correspondence Club’, founded in 1930 by such fans as Raymond A. Palmer, it was originally devoted to encouraging greater levels of correspondence among science fiction fans.
ISA is widely held to be the first science fiction fandom organization ever, but not the first sf club as such. The reason for this is because it was composed of the earliest type of science fiction fan, fans who believed “that the aim of every fan should not be a collection of fantastic fiction, but a home laboratory where fictional dreams might attain reality.”
It’s official organ, THE COMET (considered by many to be the first SF fanzine), was entirely devoted to serious articles about science, like “Recent Advancements in Television”. Though its membership consisted of fans who read sf, they were deadly serious about promoting the development of technology and science in general. Perhaps the first sercon organization. (SM)
[ See PALMERISM, FIRST FANZINE, FIRST FAN CLUB, & SERCON ]
“IT IS A PROUD AND LONELY THING TO BE A FAN”
— This popular tag line comes from the short story PROUD AND LONELY by W. McFarlane which appeared in the June 1949 issue of ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION. In the story a spaceman (lone survivor of a mission?) chisels the following line on a Martian rock: “It is a proud and lonely thing to be a man.”
Fans were quick to convert ‘man’ into ‘fan’ and drop the line in conversation, or into their fanpub as an interlineation. Nobody knows exactly what it means, but it crops up occasionally even yet.
As Harry Warner Jr. put it: “It just happened to be a bit of hexameter that filled some obscure fannish need to perfection.”