gafiate n.

#1 on the Hit Parade for gafiates. — Lets Get Away From It All.

Fanhistory is bound to spark something of a faaanish renaissance, which will be accentuated by the publication of a Fancy III. However, the resultant revival ought to have passed its peak by 1971. The faaanish fans will be more numerous than at present, but with a slightly increased number of semi-gafiates included in that total.

I’d been looking forward to doing this issue so that I could tell you all about the apartment that Terry and I had found out in Great Falls, and so that we could give you our brand new, semi-permanent address. But we don’t live there any more. Gafiates, I suppose, are not meant to have permanent addresses. Their mail might catch up with them.

Me, I’m Susan, Old Fan and Tired, local gafiate. I’m the short one with glasses, who has no ambition to write SF.

[T]hey will be back. You can count on it. Unless, of course, they are not. Permanent gafiates appear to be the rule in only one class, those who in early adolescence, for a brief period of time, read great quantities of science fiction in a brief lacuna between childhood and the onset of a purposeful sex drive.

Taking the matter to the other extreme, someone asked if there were any gafiates out there. Several people turned to look at me, so I proudly held my hand in the air. Just because I was voted Most Gafiated Fan at the worldcon, however, that doesn’t mean there aren’t people in the world who are more out of touch than even I am.

Corflu’s Guest of Honor is always chosen randomly the afternoon before the con, and this year’s winner was Nashville fan John Bartelt, who said that not only was ha [sic] a gafiate, but that he thought about women’s volleyball more than he thought about fanzines.

Former American and now Australian fan gafiate Lee Smoire appeared on Australia’s edition of the TV gameshow The Weakest Link on April 19th.

Terry received enthusiastic letters from [...] gafiates like Robert Lichtman—who was living on Stephen Gaskins’ hippy commune in Tennessee at the time.