Fans are Slans!

A (usually) humorous catchphrase meaning that fans are both bright and discriminated against.

The central character in the 1940 A. E. van Vogt novel Slan was a superhumanly intelligent youth in unsympathetic surroundings. Hence, the gag line "Fans are Slans!" became a rallying cry among Third Fandom.

While not seriously considering themselves a tendril-bearing, mutant super-intelligentsia, fans identified with slans as a persecuted minority because of the reactions they frequently got from mundane society merely for reading that "Crazy Buck Rogers Stuff" or even reading at all – but not to the extent that they really believed fans were superhuman beings, Second Fandom's half-serious Star-Begotten claims notwithstanding.

Still, during the 1940s and '50s, when many fans were intellectual autodidacts working in blue-collar jobs, there must have been a certain comfort in thinking themselves superior to the mundanes around them.

A more recent variation: "Fans really are slans -- they're just not very good at it...."

The notion of fans as slans gave rise to such terms as slan shack and Slan Center.

Also see: "It is a Proud and Lonely Thing to Be a Fan," "Fans Are the Race of Tomorrow," Star-Begotten, Sevagram, Cosmic mind.

From Fancyclopedia 2, ca. 1959

Literally understood, "fans are superman mutants" -- or, at least, "fans are smarter than most people" -- but actual semantic content is according to the mood and attitude of the user. See Slan.

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Fanspeak

1940s—

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.