Gafia and egobo part of fanzine world
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| News Media Commentary | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Gafia and egobo part of fanzine world |
| Commentator: | Robert Sward |
| Date(s): | Jan 9, 1982 |
| Venue: | |
| Fandom: | Science Fiction fandom |
| External Links: | |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Gafia and egobo part of fanzine world was an article in The Globe and Mail. It was about science fiction fandom. The majority of the article is about fanzines, but it also delves into conventions as well.
Excerpts
Science fiction and fan magazine enthusiasts have their own vocabulary, a sort of "fanspeak," to borrow a term from George Orwell. "Gafia," for example, is an acronym, a specialized contraction of the initial letters of the phrase, "getting away from it all." A "pro-zine" would be a more expensively produced and professional fanzine. Many of the small-circulation (200 to 300 subscribers) fanzines are typed onto stencils and inex- pensively duplicated on Mimeo- graph machines. "Corflu" is fan- speak for "correction fluid," the fast-hardening fluid used to correct stencils. "Egobo" means ego boost. "Blog" is a lethal fanzine punch concocted more or less at random out of any available alco-holic beverages. Many of the terms or euphemisms, like "minac" (the mininum number of published pages needed to remain in the amateur press association), were in use in the forties and fifties.
According to Wayne, there are 15 people in Toronto actively in- volved in amateur science fiction and fan magazine publishing. 'There have been groups or commu- nities of Torontonians active in extra-commercial publishing since the 1930s. Current fanzines include Energumen, Just me, Aspidistra, Simulacrum, A-Bas and Canadian Fundom. The writing is highly personal and reads like correspon- dence or coded letters between people who know one another, but live in different places. "Co-edit with me and not only will I give you a zine collection, but we'll have a Hugo in no time."
The fanzines and conventions generate a tremendous amount of information and are, Wayne says, “part of the McLuhanesque com-munity, a further example of the global village and the ability of people with specialized interests to communicate over vast distanc-es,"