Fan-feuding is the growing artform of the 1980s sf community. Fanzines, filk-singing, conrunning, Daveism, and New Celibacy have all had their day, and very boring it was too. Fan-feuding, by contrast, is inspirational, intellectually stimulating, and able to be practised in the privacy of one's bedroom with little more equipment than a typewriter and a well-oiled imagination. But the stultified fakefan establishment, the grey hegemonic gerontocracy of convention politicos, the pitiful hacks of the dwindling but powerful fanzine sector, all jealously conspire to deny Feudists their rightful place at the centre of the modern sf community. Repeated demands for feuding halls at conventions, full fanzine coverage of Feudist texts, and compulsory attendance at Feudist pub meetings, have been ignored by such isolated pockets of minority self-interest which fear to surrender power to the fandom of the majority and of the future.
THE FEUDIST IN THE STREET HAS HAD ENOUGH OF THIS!!! While such feeble and unhealthy institutions as APAs are courted, given space for their decadent "tea-parties", and asked for their useless advice on convention programming, fan-feuding, the POPULAR fan activity, is wilfully ignored, shunned and swept under the carpet! IT IS TIME TO WORK TOGETHER FOR FEUDISTS' CONTROL!
However, it cannot be denied that the Feudist community itself needs to make some EFFORT. If Feudists are to seize control of fandom, they must first work hard to instil military discipline. A crack-trained, tightly-knit elite team of intellectual commando Feudists will be an efficient revolutionary force, primed to storm the barricades of the creaking establishment and take its structures into Feudist hands like a rat up a drain. The present disorganised rabble, however, might with justice be alleged to be incapable of taking a trip in an acid factory. Feudists must work above all on their intellectual skills -- the area in which they even now vastly outshine the lumpenfakefans -- honing their already sharp and flexible minds into razor-like steel traps, which no soft-bodied milksop fanzine fan or deranged toothless filk-singer will be able effectively to construct a counter-argument against.
Fan-feuding is in crisis! Already certain rotten elements have begun to subvert the Good Old Way by resorting to such DESPICABLE STRATEGEMS as writing novels, getting jobs, having babies, moving to Texas, taking flying lessons or falling in love so as to evade their natural, genetically healthy role in fan-feuding. These irresponsible bloodsucking lice on the armpit of the Feudist community put all true Feudists, and the whole complex, life-enhancing practice of fan-feuding itself, at grave risk. And how many of these enervated insects lurk watchfully sleeping in our midst, ready to STRIKE and to wreck Feudists' chance at seizing absolute power? Rigorous psychological training and ruthless culling are the only way to curb this tendency which may not yet have Gone Too Far.
It is proposed that Feudists begin this essential training process, which will rapidly expose for destruction the small but lethal Fifth Column of weaklings in their ranks, by appropriating the more useful structures of the decadent establishment and retrieving their original purpose of moulding a handful of intellectually and physically flabby fans into an INVINCIBLE FIGHTING MACHINE OF THE MIND. APAs and conventions, so long despised as the soft luxuriating foetid wombs of rambling sub-literary incoherence and revolting hedonism and drunkenness, will, in Feudist hands, reveal themselves for the first time as the seething intellectual power-houses which their Great Founders intended!
FEUDAPA (OE: The Paranoia Kid) is instituted as of NOW. Feudists' first deadline is tomorrow, and all backsliders will be ELIMINATED. Minac is 20 sides of single-spaced A4 for every issue, and no fancy stuff with the paragraphing! Within FEUDAPA all petty local disputes are suspended and a new series of feuds, SCIENTIFICALLY WORKED OUT, is hereby declared. A computerised list has been circulated to the inner circle, telling each SOLDIER OF THE CEREBELLUM who is trying to drive them out of fandom, what methods the enemy has used up to now, who their friends are and what the enemy has done to them. Dummy fanzine articles etc are supplied in appropriate cases.
Nest week's mailing will of course include mailing comments. For those who have never sullied their SOLDIERS' BRAINS with APA membership, some explanation is appropriate. APA members traditionally comment on each other's work, at some length. In FEUDAPA, mailcomming everyone is of course compulsory, being a vital part of the Training Process, in which those who fail under stress to CONFORM to their own INTERIOR LOGIC may gently learn the error of their ways before being HYGIENICALLY CULLED. With the best brains of the Feudist community all working meticulously on each and every member's texts, all will rapidly become lethally competent at avoiding such subtle, self-created TRAPS as not checking references to one's own fanzine statements, tacit admission of any crime one's enemy has accused one of, loss of the moral high ground, use of REAL NAMES and CHECKABLE DATA when spreading vague slurs, or alienating the foolish sympathies of sentimental neutrals with ill-timed or insufficiently heart-rending appeals.
FEUDCON (Chairperson: The Raving Ratbag) will take place in Birmingham at Easter. The first programme item is the ELIMINATION and total destruction of non-Feudist members of a convention which Feudist Control has at great expense arranged to be there (sponsorship by Lonrho). This short and cheerful opening item is followed by a speech by our VERY SPECIAL GOH, whose name we cannot reveal but who will fly in from the non-continental USA. FGOH is the Fake Bob Shaw. The programme as a whole (details to be announced when agreed) features a pleasant balance between serious cadre training and items in a lighter mood.
Those lacking in IMAGINATIVE VISION may object that Feudists will be unable to co-operate with established enemies in these important ventures. We have the answer to these IDIOTIC WANKERS. Members of FEUDAPA and FEUDCON will enlist under computer-generated pseudonyms, known only to The Paranoia Kid and The Raving Ratbag. A more reasonable objection is that scientific training feudac may be disrupted by static emanating from feuds outside. All outside Feudist activity, from pub meetings and fanzine articles to private correspondence of ANY length, even if not further circulated, is hereby BANNED. This temporary restriction on Feudists' liberty is regretted, but it will be appreciated that all is for the Greater Good. Efficient training is essential to the Revolution, after which all feuds may be freely pursued to the exclusion of everything else. Meanwhile, remember, NO FEUDAC outside RECOGNISED CHANNELS.
The soft-bodied mindless perverts and JELLIES of the non-Feudist community will begin to feel the benefits of this refreshing WIND OF CHANGE at once.
UNITY IS STRENGTH!! CARELESS TALK COSTS LIVES!! MENS SANA IN CORPORE SANO!!
[Document found carved on the mutilated torso of Abigail Frost]
Token political rantlet: the proposed "oral" targets in the National Curriculum Council's report on primary English include the ability to "listen and respond to increasingly complex instructions". That's right, in State schools it's going to be an English teacher's job to teach the (lower-class) little dears to follow orders. Always suspected that's what the Tories wanted; but surprised to see it so baldly admitted. I think I'll put my remaining eggs down for Christ's Hospital, just in case....
Chicken Bones 1 (1989)