Angels

An archaic fan term, borrowed from the legitimate theater, where angel is used to describe the "patrons" who support them with grant-sized donations that enable them to function at enough of a profit to continue without charging ruinous admissions or requiring that the actors, writers and stage crew starve to death.

In fandom, in the 1940s and through the ’50s, "angels" tended to be fanzine patrons who provided sufficient cash to individual fan editors to finance, for example, a lithographed cover or something else equally special. Angels also provided funding toward sending fans to conventions they could not otherwise afford.

The act of carrying out this practice was called angeling and one would say that a fan with such a benefactor had been angeled.

Forry Ackerman was one of fandom’s foremost angels, contributing to and promoting a variety of fannish endeavors. For example, he funded Ray Bradbury’s trip to the First Worldcon in 1939, as well as Bradbury’s first fanzine, and made up the shortfall in the Big Pond Fund to bring Ted Carnell from England to the 1949 Worldcon, Cinvention, in Cincinnati.

Angels still exist, but they often work through mundane crowd-funding platforms.

From Fancyclopedia 1, ca. 1944

Wilson calls Los Angelenoes Angels, but the word usually means somebody who contributes a sizable bit of dough to a fanzine to help it do something special like having a lithographed cover.

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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.