Fancyclopedia
Entry updated 6 October 2025. Tagged: Fan, Publication.
Fandom has generated many reference works about itself, early examples typically being directories and mailing lists of currently active fans. The grandiose-sounding Fancyclopedia project has, like the present SFE, seen two distinct print editions followed by a third and still current manifestation online.
The first Fancyclopedia (1944) began as an N3F project and was edited by Jack Speer using (at least on the cover) his regular fan pseudonym John Bristol, with assistance from Forrest J Ackerman and many other Los Angeles fans, and published from Los Angeles, California. It is a highly idiosyncratic reference guide to fandom that assembles not only facts, publications and (its avowed focus) fan Terminology but fannish mythology, idiosyncrasies, whimsy and catchphrases (such as "unendurable pleasure indefinitely prolonged"), with a certain element of "print the legend". The Introduction states: "While nicknames of fans and pet names of fan magazines are identified here, biographies have been left to the various Who's Whos of fandom, and fanzines in detail to Dr. Swisher's excellent S-F Check-list." The booklet ran to approximately 100 pages.
This first venture was later expanded by Dick Eney (again with the help of many others credited within) as Fancyclopedia II (1959), published from Alexandria, Virginia, in an edition of 500 numbered copies. There were 200 pages in all, including the front cover. Eney went on to publish two supplements: the twenty-page Additions and Corrections: Fancyclopedia II (1960 chap) and the sixteen-page The Rejected Canon (1962 chap), reprinting those Speer entries in the 1944 Fancyclopedia which for one reason or another had been omitted in 1959 – surprisingly including Convention and Conference (the latter defined as "A smaller convention ...") because fifteen years later they required too much updating.
Eney and others long intended to publish a third volume, but various plans for a further print edition fell through. Under the auspices of The Fanac Fan History Project, US fan Jim Caughran converted the first two Fancyclopedias to a digital format for online publication: the first version appeared in 2007 with Caughran and Joe Siclari listed as co-editors. This was taken over by the current webmaster Mark Olson in 2010, with a different website using a modern wiki format. Fancyclopedia 3 also incorporates much other material such as rich brown's online fan language glossary Dr. Gafia's Fan Terms and various fan lexicons, and unlike the first edition now contains a great many biographies of fans and professionals with fannish roots or links. Also included are listings of Conventions, publishers and relevant publications such as Fanzines, the latter linking where possible to scans hosted at Fanac.org. The website is updated daily by many hands and continues to grow.
With typical fan shorthand the Fancyclopedias are often referred to within the community as Fancy 1, 2 and 3. Speer's own pet name for the first volume, also used by Eney, was the still terser Cy. [DRL]
further reading
- Jack Speer as John Bristol, editor. Fancyclopedia (Los Angeles, California: Fantasy Foundation, 1944) [encyclopedia: pb/nonpictorial]
- Dick Eney, editor. Fancyclopedia II (Alexandria, Virginia: Operation Crifanac, 1959) [encyclopedia: pb/nonpictorial]
- Dick Eney, editor. Additions and Corrections: Fancyclopedia II (Alexandria, Virginia: Operation Crifanac, 1960) [nonfiction: chap: pb/nonpictorial]
- Dick Eney, editor. The Rejected Canon (Alexandria, Virginia: Operation Crifanac, 1962) [nonfiction: chap: pb/]
links
- Fancyclopedia I (facsimile)
- Fancyclopedia I (transcript)
- Fancyclopedia II
- Interim Fancyclopedia online (archived)
- Fancyclopedia 3
previous versions of this entry