Eofan

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An eofan is somebody who was doing fanac and making inroads toward fandom before fandom really existed.

Jack Speer became one of fandom's earliest historians, introducing his concept of Numerical Fandoms (which see), initially covering First Fandom, Second Fandom and Third Fandom.

Fairly early on, Speer was told he hadn't started his history of the microcosm early enough ... so, on revising his original, he dubbed this earlier period "eofandom" and the fans who were active there became "eofans". Its usage makes it possible to write a sentence which makes perfect sense when read but seems like nonsense when spoken aloud: "An eofan can never be a neofan."

One of Speer’s critics was Don Wollheim, who said fandom started crawling out of its primeval ooze in 1929 in his view of its origins, published in Fan Slants 3 (June 1944).


Fanspeak
This is a fanspeak page. Please extend it by adding information about when and by whom it was coined, whether it’s still in use, etc.