Received: by bdragon.shore.net (0.99.970109)
  id AA09814; 07 Mar 97 04:27:22 -0500
From: higgins@fnald.fnal.gov (Bill Higgins)
Reply-To: filk-l@bdragon.shore.net (Multiple recipients of Filk discussion)
Nntp-Posting-Host: fnale.fnal.gov



In article , Ulrika O'Brien 
writes:
> "Rebecca Ore"  wrote:
> 
>>Sharyn's error re fandom was assuming that s.f. fans weren't successful
>>lawyers, doctors, and so forth.  
> 
> Actually, I think her error was very probably doing exceptionally
> sloppy ethnographic research, and getting a shallow, surface
> understanding of a complex and extensive culture.  It 
> would have helped the quality of her data a great deal if
> she had used better anthropological method, to include using
> a "native" informant, better yet, several.

I haven't yet seen, in this too-widely-posted thread, a mention that
McCrumb's second mystery about SF fandom, *Zombies of the Gene Pool*,
was clearly penned by someone who had swallowed one or more books of
fannish history.  Which is one of the methods Gary Farber recommends
for improving verisimilitude in such a novel.

It still felt like book-larnin' to me, not like a natural grasp of the
milleiu.  (To compare, John Varley's story "Press ENTER," which
features a hacker, reads like it was written the day after Varley
first encountered a copy of the Arpanet Jargon File.  Painful.)

(This is pretty much about fandom.  Followups to rec.arts.sf.fandom.)

  Karen E Cooper (kecooper@maroon.tc.umn.edu)  |    Bill Higgins
            on customer service:               |   Fermi National 
"I cannot recommend either of these companies, |     Accelerator
          although I will say that             |     Laboratory
everyone was unfailingly polite on the phone,  |      Internet: 
 even while telling their outrageous lies."    | higgins@fnal.fnal.gov

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