Femizine: A Study of Femme-Fans' Labour in Post-War Fan Cultures

Since its first published appearance, as the title of a 1943 article by Don Thompson, the phrase 'Fandom is a Way of Life' has been used as a rallying cry to identify fandom as a set of meaningful socio-cultural practices (Eney 1959b). According to Jack Speer, editor of the first Fancyclopedia (1944), 'SF is his ruling passion' (Speer 1944a; my emphasis) while women fans were regarded as appendages to the true (male) members of sf fandom. A key starting point is Justine Larbalestier's The Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction (2002) which, taking its inspiration from Joanna Russ's 1980 article 'Amor Vincet Foeminam', sets sex-war stories by men and women in the context of the gendered antagonisms that occurred within mid-century fandom. [...]taking inspiration from Russ, but inverting her critique of female writers of the 1950s as parochial and unchallenging, Lisa Yaszek's groundbreaking Galactic Suburbia (2008) not only reclaims women sf authors such as Mildred Clingerman, Carol Emshwiller, Zenna Henderson, Alice Eleanor Jones and Judith Merril but also explores their relationship to the gendered spaces of home and domestic labour.