Kipple

(Were you looking for one of the other Kipples?)

Kipple is unwanted household junk that just seems to accumulate. The term came into fanspeak from Philip K. Dick’s “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” (1968):

Kipple is useless objects, like junk mail or match folders after you use the last match or gum wrappers or yesterday's homeopape. When nobody's around, kipple reproduces itself. For instance, if you go to bed leaving any kipple around your apartment, when you wake up the next morning there's twice as much of it. It always gets more and more.

A story goes that after someone told the old joke

Q: "Do you like Kipling?" 
A: "I don't know, I've never kippled." 

Terry Carr was asked what "kipple" was and replied that it was household junk and piles up. It caught on.

Note that this has nothing to do with collecting, a noble fannish pursuit.

See also: Mathom, Den, Fannish Splendor.

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Fanspeak

1968—

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.