Neopro
A neopro is any writer who has sold very few stories professionally and/or hasn't been at it long.
Unlike neofan, which is rarely a term of opprobrium, neopro is often used to designate annoying professional newbies — new professionals who aren't full of themselves tend simply to be called pros, while fuggheaded authors may merit the label long after they've been published.
In the 1960s, Harry Warner coined the neologism prohh for this sort of behavior, but it never caught on. Nonetheless, we recognize many neopros in it, as Terry Carr wrote in Focal Point 2:15, October 1970:
I think it was in Beabohema’s lettercolumn that Harry Warner proposed one of the more useful fannish neologisms I’ve heard, and I wonder if anybody else noticed. He made up the term prohh to serve as a kind of analog of faaan as spake by Tucker, i.e. to indicate obnoxiousness. The prohh is the guy who harangues everybody with tales of everything he writes or sells, or plans to write or sell, or counts the number of words he’s sold including 'pseudonymous' novels, or otherwise keeps going on pro-writer ego trips.
(Amusingly, the term faan has come to mean an exceptionally fannish fan, not an obnoxious one.)
This sense of neopro is well illustrated by a story told about a new writer in the 1960s who was visiting Boston and dropped in on a NESFA meeting at Tony Lewis' house. At the meeting, club members happened to be collating Instant Message, the clubzine. One of the club members said "Welcome! Will you help collate?" The writer replied, "No, I'm a professional now, so I don't do things like that anymore." Whereupon Ben Bova came in from the other room and said "Isaac (Asimov) and I are out of page 6 — can you give me some more?"
| 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. |
