in General Semantics: the characteristically human ability to transmit knowledge to succeeding generations by means of (written) language; (hence, in Fandom) the act of documenting fannish activities
I hope to show clearly and convincingly that the answer is to be found in the patent fact that human beings possess in varying degrees a certain natural faculty or power or capacity which serves at once to give them their appropriate dignity as human beings and to discriminate them, not only from the minerals and the plants but also from the world of animals, this peculiar or characteristic human faculty or power or capacity I shall call the time-binding faculty or time-binding power or time-binding capacity. What I mean by time-binding will be clearly and fully explained in the course of the discussion, and when it has been made clear, the question—What Is Man ?—will be answered by saying that man is a being naturally endowed with time-binding capacity—that a human being is a time- binder—that men, women and children constitute the time-binding class of life.
This expression by the way comes from the pen of a noted writer on the progress of man; and he states that man differs from the lower forms of life in that the others are simply ‘space binding’ while we are also ‘time binding’.
If mankind lived as long as a thousand years, it would be necessary to invent some totally different method of memory association in order to be effectively time-binding.
His mind made a timebinding leap backwards: This, he thought, absorbed, was how religious folk had felt in the old days the first time an atheist or rationalist manifested verbal hostility towards their religion.
‘Have you ever heard of timebinding?’ he asked derisively. ‘When each generation accumulates the knowledge of the one before it, progress is a perfectly cumulative, straightforward thing.’
He intended it to refer to such fannish characteristics as interest in fantasy, time-binding ability, interest in many things, ability to express oneself in print, and the strong feeling of kinship between fans.
Fans, being an inherently time-binding sort, not only bind up their own times passed, but anyone else’s they can glom onto.
Peter’s piece is introspective, well-written, and manages to be analytical while still being anecdotal; it’s an educational piece of time-binding, as well as a personal slice of British fanhistory in the 60’s.
A great piece of time-binding, not to mention gossip, and That Cover—which Is a decidedly dodgy version of the Fannish Relationships Diagram which swept through British party fandom in 1984.
This is also an example of how a Heinlein child lives in the past, present and future simultaneously, with cross-references to each—what Steve Stockdale, executive director of the Institute of General Semantics, explained was Heinlein’s interpretation of time-binding.
Last modified 2021-10-25 15:08:07
In the compilation of some
entries, HDSF has drawn extensively on corresponding entries
in OED.