a fan who shuns organized fandom; a fan who advocates for individual or small-group activities
SIDNEY M DEAN vents his spleen on fanarchists [...] ‘So five fans can accomplish more by working singly on separate projects than the same five fans can working together on one project. Brother, it’ll take a helluva damn good man to prove that to me.’
fanarchists—Those who oppose the existence of a general or even regional fen organization…. Fully articulated, the theory is a species of rugged individualism which asserts that fen acting singly or in small natural groups can accomplish more with the same amount of work than they can thru a super-organization.
I enjoyed reading it, but I didn’t agree at all. Guess I’m no Fanarchist at heart. To me, a soapbox makes a poor typewriter stand.
During the 1950s Dave was active in the Fanarchist crowd—those largely New York fans who avoided both fannish and mundane politics on the grounds that fanning should be fun.
The Riverside Dive [sic] crowd called themselves Fanarchists, and most of them were anarchists, but nothing like today’s thugs who cover their faces with scarves and use any demonstration as an opportunity to break windows and set fire to cars.
antedating 1942
Last modified 2022-02-15 17:54:32
In the compilation of some
entries, HDSF has drawn extensively on corresponding entries
in OED.