Page:Stirring Science Stories, February 1941.djvu/126

  ANTASY readers are strange people. Unlike the readers of Westerns and Detectives, fantasy fans insist on doing things. Just what things doesn't always matter just as long as they are doing something. Thousands of them collect their fantasy readings, accumulating huge quantities of amazingly interesting magazines, books, motion picture stills, clippings, and what not. Others write long letters to each other and to the editors expounding on every topic under the sun with an erudition that always amazes the outsider. Many form clubs, societies, leagues, international federations and so on. When that happens things really start rolling. Visits are made between fans and between fan groups, wrangles, ideas, a veritable microcosm of activity goes on. All this in the name of fantasy, in the name of science-fiction, in the name of weird-fiction.

This world of readers' thought, of fantasy life, we choose to term the Fantasy World. This column is here to do justice to the affairs, thoughts, and opinions of that world. If it weren't here, your editors would be deluged with letters and delegations until it appeared. Besides which we're all in favor of it; we're a part of that fantasy world and we love it.

The fantasy world has its own independent amateur press. Dozens of fan magazines, some monthly, some otherwise, usually mimeographed, reach all over the real world binding the active centers of the fantasy world together. Whether this column will endeavor to keep track of these publications will depend on a number of factors, principally the length of this department and the amount of interest that these magazines may contain.

The big affair in fantasy fandom in the past few years has been the nation-wide gathering that occurs annually. This gathering, the Science Fiction Convention, usually occurs during the summer, is usually sponsored by a fan organization and is awaited with, baited breath by writers, fans, and yes, editors all over the country. It serves as a grand opportunity to meet all the people whose stories, or whose letters you've read all year round or about whom you've heard or to whom you've something to say. In past years such conventions have been held with growing success in New York, in Philadelphia, and in Chicago. The 1940 gathering was at the latter city and it is of that that The Fantasy World will deal.

EPTEMBER second at the Hotel Chicagoan saw dozens and dozens of America's leading fans, writers and enthusiasts, converging 