How to Join[edit]

Don't Panic! JoiningFancyclopedia requires approval by the editors:we won't allowanonymous editing, and wish to avoid spammers, but, otherwise, we are open and inclusive and welcome all SFfans to contribute. Send an email to the editors atfancy3@baskerville.org and we'll help you get started.

If you are not known to the editors, please tell us a bit about yourself or help us by giving us the name of another fan who can identify you to us. Once we know who you are, you will be free to contribute as you like, editing and adding articles. (We don't do this to decide if you're "important enough" to edit, but to make sure that all editors are real and are fans.)

Look yourself up! Look up your friends and theorganizations you’ve been part of, thecons you’ve been to. Do you have details that will create a fuller picture? Add them!

About Fancyclopedia[edit]

Jack Speer, Our Founder, in 1938.

Science fiction fandom began in the 1930s, when readers of thepulp magazines began to write to each other. Whilefandom can be a very loose association, its members identify with fandom and with each other, and communicate with otherfans.

Fancyclopedia 3 is a collective enterprise of all of fandom. Based on the previous works byJack Speer (Fancyclopedia 1, 1944) andDick Eney (Fancyclopedia 2, 1959), plus lexicons byrich brown andLeah Zeldes Smith, it is written by fans who want to contribute.

Fancyclopedia 3 was sporadically worked on by a number of fans, includingDick Eney. In 1983,Bruce Pelz organized a project to publishFancy 3 in time forL.A.con II in 1984 where Eney wasFan GoH. It didn’t happen. Pelz later passed the project on toFanac.org andJoe Siclari recruitedJim Caughran, who converted the existing materials to a wiki format. In 2010 he passed the project toMark Olson who has edited it since (along with a growing number of other people).Jack Weaver and Joe Siclari provided strong support in the site's launch.John Bray ported it to Mediawiki and automated much of the design.

Articles[edit]

In 1959, fannish knowledge could be bound in one volume.

Like most encyclopedias,Fancyclopedia contains articles on people, events andorganizations. It has aFanzines category. It contains a glossary offanspeak, which is referenced by any articles using fannish terms (we started usingrich brown's glossaryDr. Gafia'sFan Terms).

• People: Biographies offans and their achievements and exploits. We do not limit ourselves toBNFs!
• Events: History — the happenings which shapedfandom (or are just interesting).
• Conventions: Big, small and in-between.
• Organizations:Clubs, including city and regional clubs,apas, online lists, etc.
• Fanzines:Focal point fanzines or just people'sperzines, includingfannish websites.

We want the facts, but we also want good stories so thatFancy 3 gives people a flavor of what makes fandom, fandom.

We seeded Fancy 3 with the articles fromFancyclopedia 1 andFancyclopedia 2, identified as such,Dr. Gafia's Fan Terms, and many new short articles and stubs. We've also pulled a lot of great information fromRich Lynch's notes towards a history of the ’60s andLeah Zeldes Smith’s lexicons inSTET 9 (1999) andSpirits of Things Past 1 (2001). We depend on your contributions; get busy and write something. Go ahead and add credits for anything you contribute.

We're adding material as quickly as we can, but we're particularly in need of articles (even if no more than stubs) onfanzines,fans,clubs, andconventions. But general articles are fine, historical essays, whatever!

Editing is quick and easy and requires no arcane knowledge of HTML.

While your editors do their best to maintain a common style and presentation,Fancyclopedia is edited by its users. With the exception of reprints from earlier editions ofFancyclopedia and other publications, allfans are free to edit topics, as well as contribute articles, suggest authors, and argue with the editors on matters of content, style or presentation. Make your changes — don't wait for permission! (And we're a lot less anal than Wikipedia, so hopefully it will be less frustrating to contribute!) Just bear in mind that this is a collaborative process, so your contributions may well be edited by others.

Articles should be relevant toscience fiction fandom as such. We welcome material from closely-related areas, like SF – though since theScience Fiction Encyclopedia does a fine job on SF-the-literature which we don't need to duplicate, we try to focus on what SF means (and meant) to fans.

In general, we are not interested in pop culture or in areas such ascomics which split off from fandom and are now essentially separate. So while comics fandom,anime, and theSociety for Creative Anachronism (as examples) arose fromscience fiction fandom, they are now largely independent. Articles on otherfandoms should note their relationships withscience fiction fandom and provide links to sites concerned with those fandoms.

You can view recent updates and additions at any time by clicking on "Recent changes" in the menu on the left side of most pages.