| (deCamp) - Moskowitz and Speer have been the chief whitherers of fandom, tho others have turned a hand to it, as in Ecco's "Recent Stabilizing Developments in Stf Fandom". Early whitherings included comparisons of the history of the prozines to the history of Occidental civilization (with particular reference to the Dark Ages), but aside from an occasional article on the order of "Is Science-Fiction in a Rut?", filosofizing has been over why the history of fandom has followed the pattern it has, and what comes next. Opinions differ as to the pattern of the past, but the swinging-pendulum model used in Speer's original history, involving three fandoms, is most generally accepted. A prize-winning profetic article by Speer, published in the LASFL, was realized in the main by the Second Transition and Third Fandom. Moskowitz, during the Second Fandom and Transition, wrote many discussions of the course fandom was following, but was handicapped by having to get his history largely from old fanzines. He was, however, the first to point out the shift from the First Fandom to the Second in "This Changing Tendency Among Fan Magazines."
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